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Germany has a new chancellor. Center-left Social Democrat Olaf Scholz has been elected by the Bundestag as the new chancellor of Germany, replacing Angela Merkel, and will head a coalition government with the Green Party and the neoliberal Free Democrats. Who would have believed it when Olaf Scholz was first put forward as the SPD's candidate for chancellor in August 2020? As recently as 2019, he had been defeated in the battle for the SPD chairmanship. Not only because the party wanted an explicitly left-wing leader, but also because the introverted pragmatist had never managed to win the hearts of the Social Democrat rank-and-file. But Olaf Scholz, who took over as Germany's finance minister and vice chancellor in 2018, seemed to many in his party to be the only political heavyweight fit for the job. The SPD, a junior partner in a coalition with the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) under Chancellor Angela Merkel, was lagging far behind in opinion polls. Olaf Scholz became candidate for chancellor in August 2020. But for months, Scholz was often mocked. For many, it was hard to believe when he announced his desire to win and claimed that he would be the future chancellor. But the stoic way in which he carried out his campaign, outwardly unperturbed, seems to have been the basis of the new chancellor's success. Taking defeat without complaining, getting back up and carrying on undeterred, and never ever seeming to doubt himself – those seem to be the guiding principles of Olaf Scholz. He was born in the western German city of Osnabrück in 1958 but has for several years now lived in Potsdam, just outside Berlin, together with his wife, Britta Ernst, who is education minister in the state of Brandenburg. Scholz displays unwavering self-confidence. In his decadeslong political career, he has experienced a number of upsets, none of which have been able to throw him off course in the long term. Not even the parliamentary committees of inquiry into the Cum-Ex tax scandal and the Wirecard fraud case have been able to do him much harm. It was widely felt that he did not make a good impression during the committee's questioning: He constantly claimed not to be able to remember anything. But the subsequent public criticism fizzled out for lack of substance. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Olaf Scholz has persistently and tenaciously worked his way up the political ladder. In that process, he underwent a remarkable transformation. As deputy chairman of the SPD youth organization in the 1980s, he was known as a radical socialist calling for "the capitalist economy to be overcome." But when working as a specialist attorney for labor law with his own law firm in Hamburg, he learned a lot about how business and independent entrepreneurship really works. Scholz was soon seen as belonging to the more conservative wing of the SPD — not only in terms of economic policy. As interior minister in the city-state of Hamburg in 2001, he followed a tough course in the fight against drug dealers, allowing police to forcibly administer emetics to them to preserve evidence. As SPD secretary-general, he helped push through Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's controversial labor market reform "Agenda 2010" against the will of many left-wing party comrades. Because of his repetitive and technocratic way of speaking, he was nicknamed "Scholzomat" at that time, a play on the German word for a machine."I just had to sell a message. I had to display a certain relentlessness," Scholz later said in an attempt to justify himself. But that is only part of the truth. Olaf Scholz is not a person who often shows great emotion, and he is not an extrovert. Such an attitude seems alien to him. He is a thoroughly controlled person. Even in moments of greatest joy, he comes across like a British butler. People who know him well and have worked with him for a long time claim they have never heard him raise his voice, let alone shout when he gets angry. When something upsets him, the most he ever does is to step from one foot to the other — and his ears turn red. This last happened during a live campaign debate on TV when Scholz felt unjustly attacked by his CDU rival. Scholz has always been seen as belonging to the more conservative wing of the SPD. That made it all the more surprising when left-leaning chairpeople Saskia Esken and Walter-Borjans nominated him as the party's chancellor candidate in August 2020. In the end, the SPD opted for Scholz as a chancellor candidate although it had not wanted him as party leader. When he was chosen as the candidate, Scholz said he and the party leadership worked together closely and harmoniously. "We actually started cooperating closely with each other right after the election of the SPD chairpersons, and a very close trust grew from that so that at some point I felt like the two of them would propose me, and the two of them also felt very early on that they should propose me," he said. Such a sentence exemplifies how Scholz deals with crises: he gets up, continues undeterred, and never doubts himself. He seems blessed with unshakable self-confidence. In his decades-long political career, he has experienced many a blow, but none that threw him off course for long. But he is working on changing his demeanor, well aware that he also needs to be able to get his political message across. A week before the German election, he appeared on a popular TV show to make an urgent appeal for people to get vaccinated against COVID-19. His appearance triggered a great deal of response on social media. Users said Scholz seemed more animated than usual and appeared much more approachable. Since 2007, Olaf Scholz has almost continuously held government posts. First as federal labor minister, then as governing mayor of Hamburg. In 2018, he moved back to Berlin as federal finance minister and vice chancellor. He is said to have already had his sights set on the chancellorship when he made the last switch. During the COVID pandemic, he became more influential. As finance minister, he was responsible for providing billions in aid to companies affected by the shutdowns. He knew how to use that to put himself in the spotlight again and again. "We will use a bazooka to do all that is necessary," he promised in early 2020 when announcing bold and far-reaching financial assistance. In foreign policy, Scholz stands for continuity. Under his leadership, Germany would work for a "strong, sovereign Europe" that speaks "with one voice," "because otherwise, we won't play a role," he said. With the global population poised to reach 10 billion, there will be "many powers in the future, not only China, the US, and Russia," but also many Asian countries. He sees cooperation with the United States and NATO as a fundamental principle. Scholz has said over and over again that Germany will be able to cope with the pandemic financially. The country will have taken on €400 billion ($450 bio) in new debt by the end of 2022. Economic growth will enable the country to handle this burden, Scholz promised during the election campaign. "No one need be afraid of that, we've already managed it once after the last crisis in 2008 and 2009, and we'll manage it again in just under 10 years," he said. In late 2021, however, it has become apparent that the pandemic is far from over. The new government will have to take on even more debt to prop up the economy. Beyond the economy, enormous challenges await Chancellor Olaf Scholz in many political fields. He also needs to manage a coalition of three, quite different parties. And when forced to stop his Cabinet members from bickering, Scholz may recall a much-quoted statement he made back when he took over the fragmented and disorganized Hamburg branch of the SPD: "Whoever orders leadership from me will get it." This is an updated version of the article, which was first published on September 27, 2021. | 7Politics
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No matter which governing coalition will emerge from Germany's federal election on September 26, it's already clear that it will have to give a lot of attention to a demanding climate protection agenda. The latest string of extreme weather events in the western and southern parts of the country, where nearly 200 people died during massive flooding, and severe summer drought conditions in the past few years have spurred policymakers into action. Scientific research leaves little doubt that attempts to curb climate change must include efforts to alter domestic transport policy and mobility concepts. After all, the transport sector accounts for some 30% of Germany's overall energy consumption and one-fifth of harmful greenhouse gas emissions in Europe's economic powerhouse. If those figures stay high, it would hardly be conducive to supporting the politically agreed objective of reducing such emissions in the sector by 42% or more by the end of the decade, compared with the levels recorded in 1990. Recent polls suggest Germany's Green Party stands a good chance of becoming part of any future governing coalition. Now in opposition, it's the political force planning the most radical overhaul of the transport sector. They've certainly ratcheted up the pressure on their mainstream rivals, especially those also in the running for possible coalition constellations, notably Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party CSU, plus the center-left Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the opposition pro-business Free Liberal Democrats (FDP). All these parties have included long passages about the transformation of the transport sector in their 2021 election platforms. There's cross-party agreement that reforms are needed for both motorized private vehicles and public transport to bring down emission levels. The first milestone was achieved this past July, when more than 1 million fully electric and hybrid cars were finally registered on German roads. A purchase premium introduced in 2016 has seen over €2 billion ($2.4 billion) going as subsidies to buyers willing to own more environmentally friendly vehicles. The premium is to stay in place under the new government. "The real tipping point could occur when more secondhand e-cars — many of them initially bought as company cars — come onto the market at affordable prices," Kerstin Meyer from Berlin-based environmental think tank Agora Verkehrswende told DW. With all major German carmakers now focused on electrifying their brands, the trend toward e-mobility seems irreversible. The Greens are pushing for only allowing the sale of zero-emission cars after 2030, a decision which would spell the demise of the combustion engine. All mainstream parties are ready to grant continuing and large-scale financial support for battery development and production at home. A further boost toward cleaner individual transport is expected from Tesla's new Gigafactory outside Berlin, which is be operational at the end of the year and is eventually expected to produce about half a million fully electric cars per year. The development of hydrogen-powered vehicles is not seen as a priority among the parties. Right now, some 48 million cars — and counting — are registered in Germany. They may become increasingly environmentally friendly, but that won't solve the problem of urban areas choking from traffic congestion. The only solution can be to reduce the number of cars in use, partly by expanding car-sharing services. For many an even better solution would be improving public transport in both urban and rural areas. Here, too, the Greens are presenting the most radical reforms, with a focus on making train rides a much better alternative. Billions more are already earmarked for improving the services of German railway operator Deutsche Bahn while at the same time strengthening the role of regional competitors, especially in underserved rural areas. At the moment, Deutsche Bahn operates over 33,000 kilometers (20,000 miles) of railroad tracks, and that network is to be expanded. It's already clear, though, that modernization and expansion plans will take more time than previously envisaged, given that some 600 kilometers of tracks and many bridges were destroyed by the recent flooding and will need major repairs as quickly as possible. There are plans to connect Germany's big cities in line with a clearly structured timetable, with trains arriving simultaneously on the hour or even every 30 minutes to make changing trains easier and more predictable for passengers. Some parties have called for the reopening of railway lines long abandoned in sparsely populated areas. Closed for lack of profitability, they could once again become rural lifelines. The biggest challenge for railroad operators will be the digitization of signal boxes and switches in the years ahead. "You can only do this step by step," Sören Claus, technical officer at a train digitization test site in eastern Germany, told DW. "Making rail routes fully digital is nothing short of a technological revolution." By improving the railroad system and having further carbon dioxide reductions in mind, the Green Party also hopes to put an end to all domestic flights and do away with subsidies for smaller regional airports. In the next legislative period, local authorities are expected to be given a greater say in developing innovative traffic concepts fitting the needs of communities on the ground. Car-sharing, bike-sharing and e-scooters will most likely experience a further boost, but above all there's political willingness to allow for more public space for cycling. Slowly but surely, parts of many roads in urban areas are being taken away from cars to create safer and wider lanes for cyclists. This is set to continue. Funding for all these enhanced mobility measures is expected to continue to come from tax revenues, various EU sources and the domestic truck toll. In the end, all German mainstream parties agree that the transport sector needs an overhaul and that massive investments are required to get the job done. | 0Business
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Ukraine says Russians being pushed back near Kharkiv Ukraine reduces Russian gas flows to Europe Germany's Scholz speaks to Zelenskyy about Ukraine support US House passes fresh $40 billion Ukraine aid package Ukrainians mourn first post-Soviet President Leonid Kravchuk This live updates article is now closed. For the latest on Russia's invasion, please click here. Germany is examining a Russian announcement that it is imposing sanctions on parts of Gazprom Germania, an Economy Ministry spokesperson said. The firm is the former German unit of Russian gas producer Gazprom. Along with its subsidiaries, it operates gas storage facilities and gas trading in Germany. "The German government and Federal Network Agency, as trustees of Gazprom Germania, are already in the process of taking the necessary precautions and preparing for various scenarios," the spokesperson said in a statement. They added that gas supplies are currently guaranteed and constantly checked. The network agency said in a separate statement that it had no further details and was preparing for different scenarios. Russia's Gazprom gave up ownership of Gazprom Germania last month without explanation, forcing Germany's energy network regulator to take over operations there. The UN's nuclear agency says it is again receiving remote data from the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine. The transmission was interrupted when Russian forces occupied the site at the start of their invasion on February 24. They withdrew from the area around a month later. The International Atomic Energy Agency said late Wednesday that data transmission was restored after its inspectors and technicians were able to visit the now-definct plant in April. The agency said it was the first time in two months that it has received remote data from all nuclear power plants and spent fuel storage facilities in Ukraine where monitoring systems are in place. IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi said it was "a very important step for the IAEA to continue to implement safeguards in Ukraine.'' He also warned that on-site verification at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant "continues to be challenging owing to the presence of Russian forces and Rosatom personnel at the site.'' UNICEF spokesperson James Elder has told DW that not enough is being done to help children escape the war in Ukraine. "They have been bearing the brunt of this war and trauma," he said. "Many of them have spent time in bunkers. They've seen bombardment. Increasingly, we see children in conflicts like this on the front lines." Elder said that a child has been displaced from their homes "almost every second since the war started. That's mind boggling." Despite "an enormous effort going in aid agencies," he stressed that the sheer scale of attacks meant the needs of children could not be met. "So the impact on children remains so horrendously large," he added. According to the UN, almost 6 million refugees have fled the country, most of them women, children and the elderly. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have spoken over the phone about how best to continue providing support amid Russia's invasion. The two leaders "exchanged views on very concrete, practical ways of continuing to support Ukraine and agreed to remain in close contact," German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said in a statement. According to the statement, Scholz stressed that Russia should bring an immediate end to hostilities, withdraw forces and restore Ukraine's territorial integrity. "We appreciate the high level of dialogue with Germany and support in our struggle!" Zelenskyy said in a tweet. A pro-Russia hacker group known as "Killnet" claimed a cyberattack on websites belonging to several Italian institutions on Wednesday, Italy's ANSA news agency and several other domestic outlets including newspaper Corriere della Sera reported. As of Wednesday evening, websites belonging to Italy's Defense Ministry, Senate and National Health Institute were not functioning. The Defense Ministry's website said it was "under maintenance" and the Senate's was also inaccessible. Police said an investigation was ongoing but provided no further details. Italy's Defense Ministry and cybersecurity agency have not commented. Alexander Müller who sits on the German Bundestag or parliament's defense committee with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), part of Chancellor Scholz's governing coalition, told DW that training Ukrainian forces on German soil does not make Germany a party to the conflict. "Howitzers are the system that Ukraine said had the highest priority when they came to us," Müller said. He added, "International law is clear; we are not part of this war. And we are not taking part in this war by educating Ukrainian soldiers in Germany." "Legally, it is clear. But, you know, Vladimir Putin does not look at international law. He makes his own decisions," Müller noted. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Under a decree signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian entities are not allowed to make deals with Gazprom Germania and 30 other companies, nor is it permissible to fulfill obligations under existing deals. In addition to Gazprom Germania, Russia also sanctioned EuRoPol GAZ SA which owns the Polish section of the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline. The decree did not detail the exact nature of the sanctions being Imposed. In early April, the German government took the unprecedented step of taking control of Gazprom's German subsidiary. The takeover was preceded by an opaque ownership transfer that triggered Berlin's national security community to act. Milos Zeman, the Czech President once known for his friendly attitude toward Russia and the Kremlin, has approved a request made by 103 Czechs to join Ukraine's armed forces in the country's struggle to repel Russia's invasion. Under Czech law, Czechs are barred from military service for foreign armies. Those who violate the law can face a prison sentence of up to five years. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Approximately 400 Czechs had applied for an exemption to the ban on military service for foreign armies, the Czech Ministry of Defense said. Most of the requests have yet to be processed. Prime Minister Petr Fiala still has to co-sign approval, but he has said he would sign all requests that have been approved by Czech authorities. Slovak President Zuzana Caputova and Polish President Andrzej Duda said in Bratislava that their countries would work together to help Ukraine become a candidate for EU membership as soon as possible. Caputova said, "For the future and Europe and for peace in Europe, it is important that we talk about the future status of Ukraine." Duda said Ukrainians are fighting not just for their country but for a free Europe and "against the ambitions and imperial actions of today's Russia." At least in more typical times, it can take years or even decades to graduate from candidate status to a full EU member. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Following weeks of Russian bombardment, a Ukrainian official warns the southeastern port city of Mariupol has been transformed by the deteriorating situation into a "medieval ghetto." Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine's human rights ombudswoman, appealed to the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to help her country evacuate wounded fighters who remain still holed up at the Azovstal steel plant in the besieged city. Denisova appealed to the ICRC to help with "all possible measures to protect and assist wounded civilians who are no longer combatants." To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at a joint press conference with Austria's Chancellor Karl Nehammer and Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg in Vienna, " We are in contact with the authorities in Ukraine and in Russia to move forward," to past evacuations of civilians from Mariupol. "We don't want too much to be being said too soon," Guterres added. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters Ukraine will feel the consequences of Russia' invasion "for 100 years" due to all the unexploded ordinance Russian forces are leaving behind. "Those who live in Germany know that bombs from World War II are still frequently discovered," Scholz said. He added, "That is why we will also have to work together on the reconstruction." Werner Hoyer, president of the European Investment Bank, has told the Reuters news agency that he supports a multi-trillion-Euro Marshall Plan-style recovery program for post-war Ukraine. Under the post-World War II American recovery plan for Europe, the USS provided massive economic and technical assistance over four years' worth roughly the equivalent of $200 billion in today's currency. "What will it cost to rebuild, reconstruct Ukraine?" Hoyer asked. "One thing is quite clear to
me: We are not talking about millions but trillions," he added. Hoyer is a former German Foreign Minister under Chancellor Helmut Kohl who was in power when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Poland's Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau said his country's ambassador to Moscow had been summoned to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs after Russia's ambassador to Warsaw was splashed with red liquid on May 9, when Russsia commemorates the Soviet Red Army's victory over Nazi Germany. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The red paint was intended to symbolize Russia's bloodshed in Ukraine. Russian ambassador Sergey Andreev was on an official visit to a Warsaw cemetery where Red Army soldiers who died during World War II were buried at the time of the incident. The UN's International Labor Organization (ILO) said one-third or 4.8 million jobs in total in Ukraine had been lost since the February 24 Russian invasion. The ILO predicts an even more dire economic outlook as the war continues in its third month. "If hostilities ceased immediately, a rapid recovery could ensue, with the return of 3.4 million jobs, thus reducing employment losses to 8.9%," the ILO said in its first report on the consequences of Russia's war on Ukraine. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Sweden's Magdalena Andersson announced a mutual defense agreement in case of an attack. The announcement comes as Sweden and neighboring Finland decide whether to join NATO. Finland's parliamentary defense committee recommended Finland join NATO earlier in the week. Johnson was set to travel on to Helsinki later on Wednesday. Read the full story here. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the war could have likely been prevented if Kyiv had been a member of the transatlantic military alliance NATO beforehand. "If Ukraine had been part of NATO before the war, there would have been no war," Zelenskyy said in a video call with students at the French University Sciences Po. Zelenskyy also told the students that he wanted to restore Ukraine's territory before an end of the conflict with Russia, but that he was still open to dialogue. "Once we recoup all that is ours, we will finish this," he said. The wives of two Ukrainian soldiers who are still trapped in the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol met with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Wednesday. The women, Kateryna Prokopenko and Yuliia Fedusiuk, spoke with Francis at the end of his public audience in St. Peter's Square. "We hope that this meeting will just give us the chance to save their lives," Fedosiuk told reporters afterwards. "Our soldiers are waiting to be evacuated to a third country, to lay down their arms in case of evacuation," she said. The women mentioned that Switzerland or Turkey might be third-country options but provided no further details. The pope reportedly told the women he would do everything possible and that he would pray for them. In early May, Francis said he'd asked for a meeting with Putin to try and stop the war but did not receive a reply. Mariupol has seen some of the most destructive fighting in the war since Russia invaded on February 24. The Azovstal steel plant is the last part of the port city that is still held by Ukrainian fighters. Hundreds of civilians have been evacuated from the plant in recent days, but not soldiers. A member of the punk band and activist group Pussy Riot evaded police surveillance and escaped Russia, her lawyer confirmed. Maria Alyokhina told the New York Times that she managed to escape by dressing up as a food courier to avoid authorities who were staked out outside "I was happy that I made it, because it was an unpredictable and big 'kiss-off' to the Russian authorities," the 33-year-old told the New York Times. She told the paper that a friend drove her to the border with Belarus and she was eventually able to cross over into EU-member Lithuania. Alyokhina had been sentenced to a year of restricted movement in September following her participation in a protest showing support for jailed Kremlin-critic Alexei Navalny. Russian authorities, however, moved to covert her sentence into prison time. The leaders of the Russian-occupied region of Kherson in southeastern Ukraine said they plan to ask for the area to become a part of Russia, Russian media reported, citing an official. "There will be a request to make Kherson region a full subject of the Russian Federation," said Kirill Stremousov, an official from the region's Moscow-controlled administration. The appeal will be made to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Stremousov said. Although he did not say when the request will be made. Russia claimed full control over the Kherson region in April. The area is of strategic importance to Russia, as it provides part of a land connection between Crimea and Russian-backed separatists in areas of eastern Ukraine. The amount of Russian gas flowing through Ukraine to other European countries has dropped, Russian energy giant Gazprom confirmed. "Gazprom will deliver Russian gas in the amount of 72 million cubic meters for transit through the territory of Ukraine on May 11," a company spokesman said in comments carried by Russia's Interfax news agency. The deliveries are down from the previous day, where the order volume was at 95.8 cubic meters. The confirmation comes after Ukraine shut off some gas flows as of Wednesday morning. Ukraine's gas operator announced it would redirect gas from the Sokhranivka transit point, which is located in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. The hub delivered almost a third of the fuel piped from Russia to Europe, according to Kyiv. Officials said the gas would be redirected to another transit point. The German Economy Ministry said that its gas supplies were currently still secure, but that they "are monitoring the situation closely." Germany is Europe's largest natural gas consumer, getting much of its supplies from Russia. While the larger impact on the gas cubs to households across Europe was unclear, the move is significant in that it's the first time Ukraine has disrupted westward gas flows. DW correspondent in Ukraine, Amien Essif, said that Ukraine is hoping for Russian forces to retreat from around the second-largest city Kharkiv, similar to Moscow's retreat from areas around Ukraine's capital in April. "Russian forces had completely surrounded [Kyiv], and were then pushed out village by village until they retreated," Essif said. Essif said that a second pushback of Russian forces around Kharkiv would be important for Ukraine because the city is in the east of the country, but "it's not part of the already Russian-occupied territories in the east." "[Zelenskyy] has offered Russia a kind of cease-fire if they would agree to go back to the territories they already controlled before the recent invasion," Essif said, referring to separatist-controlled territories in the eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions. "Those would be the terms for a peace agreement." Ukrainians increasingly feel they are now getting the support they need to win the war, Essif said. "I think they believe the tables have turned a little bit." He added that there was an "easing of tensions" between Ukraine and Germany and cited German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock's recent visit to Ukraine. "Germany has been shaping European policy towards Ukraine," Essif said. "[Ukrainians] see that military imports are coming in their favor now." Asked whether Ukrainians believe Kyiv can win the war, Essif said "in western Ukraine there has been an undying belief that Ukraine will come out victorious, not just having a cease-fire with Russia" and completely expel Russian forces from all territories occupied by Moscow since 2014. "I believe it's probably different for those who are under Russian siege ... who are more likely to support a cease-fire," Essif said, referring to people living in eastern Ukraine. Britain's Defense Ministry said in an intelligence update on Twitter that fighting continues between Russian and Ukrainian forces on Snake Island, which lies off the coast of Ukraine's southwestern Odesa region. "If Russia consolidates its position on Zmiinyi Island with strategic air defence and coastal defence cruise missiles, they could dominate the north-western Black Sea," the ministry said. According to the intelligence update, Ukraine has struck Russian air defenses and resupply vessels with Bayraktar drones. "Russia’s resupply vessels have minimum protection in the western Black Sea, following the Russian Navy’s retreat to Crimea after the loss of the Moskva," Britain's Defense Ministry said. Ukrainian soldiers are expected to begin howitzer training in Germany on Wednesday. The service members arrived in Germany on Tuesday, the dpa news agency reported. The German-built self-propelled howitzers are operated by five soldiers each. Training is expected to last around 40 days. According to dpa, the training will occur at the Bundeswehr's artillery school in Idar-Oberstein in the western German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Deliveries of Russian gas transit via the Sokhranivka transit point in Ukraine's eastern Luhansk for May 11 fell to zero, data from Ukrainian gas pipeline operator GTSOU showed. Ukraine shut off some Russian gas flows in the country at 7 a.m. local time Wednesday. Ukraine's gas operator announced it would redirect gas from the Sokhranivka transit point, which is located in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. The gas will thus be redirected to another transit point in an area still under control of the Ukrainian government. Ukraine's gas operator said some 32.6 million cubic meters of gas will be halted by the decision. "The company repeatedly informed Gazprom about gas transit threats due to the actions of the Russian-controlled occupation forces and stressed stopping interference in the operation of the facilities, but these appeals were ignored," the operator said. A spokesperson for Russia's state-owned natural gas company Gazprom said he sees no grounds for Ukraine's decision. Gazprom said it was "technologically impossible" to shift all volumes to the Sudzha point, as GTSOU proposed. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The US House of Representatives agreed to a fresh $40 billion (nearly €38 billion) in assistance for Ukraine. The money will include funds for defense, humanitarian and economic needs in Ukraine. No House Democrats voted against the measure, but dozens of Republican members opposed the bill. The Senate is also expected to pass the measure at the end of this week or next week. President Joe Biden would then sign the bill. Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer earlier called on both chambers of Congress to act quickly on the legislation. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, along with other Ukrainian officials, said Russian forces are gradually being pushed away from areas surrounding the major northeastern city of Kharkiv. In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy praised the reported territorial gains and said he was "grateful to all of our protectors who are fighting back and showing truly superhuman strength to drive off the invaders' army." But he also called on his people "not to spread excessive emotions." "We should not create an atmosphere of excessive moral pressure, where victories are expected weekly and even daily," Zelenskyy said. Tetiana Apatchenko, a press officer for the main Ukrainian force in the region, said four towns north of Kharkiv had been recaptured from Russian troops in recent days. The reports could not be independently verified. Kharkiv and its surrounds have been under sustained Russian attack since early in the war. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Ukraine's first post-Soviet president, Leonid Kravchuk, died at the age of 88. Ukrainian presidential aide Andriy Yermak called his passing a "great loss." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also honored Kravchuk in his nightly video address. Kravchuk oversaw Ukraine's development of ties with the West, and its transition to a market economy. He also pledged to to give up Ukraine's nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees in a 1994 deal called the Budapest Memorandum. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock visited Ukraine in an unannounced trip. Germany's top diplomat visited the city of Bucha near Kyiv, where Russian troops are said to have engaged in alleged war crimes. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Baerbock vowed to bring the perpetrators of the Bucha killings to justice. She also visited the Kyiv suburb of Irpin, which had seen massive destruction due to the war. Baerbock also met with Zelenskyy and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba during the Kyiv visit. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres met with Ukrainian refugees in Moldova during his two-day visit to the Eastern European nation. At the same time, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said he is concerned the focus on Ukrainian refugees could detract from other crises, such as the plight of Syrian refugees in the Middle East. US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready for a long war in Ukraine. She told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Putin is expecting Western revolve to weaken over time. As Russia's war on Ukraine threatens European security, the defense commitee in Finland's parliament said it is in favor of the country's bid for NATO membership. Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist said the Nordic region is "stronger" with both Sweden and Finland in NATO. The UN said the death toll in Ukraine is "thousands higher" than the reported official figure of 3,381. ar, sdi, rs, wd/msh, rt (Reuters, AP, AFP, dpa) | 2Conflicts
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Following a week in which Germany's current Champions League representatives both suffered frustrating quarterfinal first leg defeats, it was the Bundesliga's likely representatives for next season's competition who stole the show at the weekend. Intricate midfield play, clinical finishing, lethal counterattacks, plot twists galore — and even supporters chanting outside the stadium — Eintracht Frankfurt and Wolfsburg offered it all from start to finish as they demonstrated just why they are both increasingly likely to be in the Champions League next season. For the Eagles, who eventually tamed the Wolves by virtue of sheer firepower, it would be a first foray into Europe's elite competition since they reached the final of the old European Cup in 1960 — although the historic run to the Europa League semifinal in 2019 certainly provided a foretaste of Frankfurt's appetite for continental competition. Despite setbacks at the start of each half, Adi Hütter's side remained a constant threat on the counterattack and the Bundesliga's third-most potent attack duly came out on top against the league's second-best defense. Wolfsburg had only conceded three goals so far in the Rückrunde (the second half of the Bundesliga season), but four different Frankfurt goalscorers all found the net on Saturday, as the hosts showed they are ready for the Champions League. Japanese midfielder Daichi Kamada fired home following a clever dummy, while Luka Jovic's thumping finish to make it 2-1 was even more emphatic. Andre Silva himself scored his 23rd goal of the season in the second half to restore Frankfurt's lead, before Erik Durm scored is first goal in five years. They were goals scored and created by players who epitomize Frankfurt's approach to squad building, a vindication of the work done by departing sporting director Fredi Bobic and the equally coveted head coach Hütter. Frankfurt have provided a new home for good footballers who, for various reasons, haven't quite had the rub of the green elsewhere. Jovic, of course, embodies that more than most. Having struggled to make an impact at Real Madrid,he already has four goals back at the club where he scored 36 goals in 75 appearances in his previous spell as part of Frankfurt's so-called "buffalo herd." Filip Kostic might have finished the day without an assist, but he is a big part of Frankfurt's European push. Only Thomas Müller has more assists (16) than the pacey Serbian winger (14). And then there's Andre Silva. German sports magazine "Kicker" called him "insatiable" earlier this year and it was something of an inevitability that the Portuguese striker would score at some point in this game. The same was true for Wolfsburg's Wout Weghorst, but his 18th goal of the season wasn't enough to help the Wolves win. The Dutchman was one of the first Wolfsburg players to face the media afterwards, and he could scarcely hide his disappointment that his team had been unable to "put some distance between us and the rest." Nevertheless, Oliver Glasner's team is on course to return to the Champions League for the first time since 2016. Unlike Frankfurt, and despite Weghorst's goals, Wolfsburg's success has been built on a solid defense rather than a particularly spectacular attack — although Ridle Baku's opener on Saturday was certainly spectacular enough. Like Frankfurt however, the Wolves have also got the best out of players who have slipped under the radar. Austrian midfielder Xaver Schlager has been quietly effective in midfield alongside homegrown captain Maximilian Arnold, who was disgruntled after again being overlooked by Joachim Löw last month. Wolfsburg, backed by automobile giants Volkswagen, are one of only three exemptions to German football's 50+1 ownership rule along with Bayer Leverkusen and Hoffenheim. It's thanks to their links to Volkswagen that Wolfsburg have been able to ride out the financial devastation of the pandemic better than most, with the players not having to take a pay cut. According to research by Sportbild, Volkswagen's backing would increase from €75 million to €86.25 million per year should the team qualify for the Champions League — justified in terms of Financial Fair Play by the increased visibility and value of the club. That should enable Wolfsburg to hold on to the likes of Weghorst and Baku while building a squad capable of competing in Europe and the Bundesliga — a balancing act which most German clubs fail to get right. After all, it's no surprise that one of the games of the season was produced by Wolfsburg and Eintracht Frankfurt on Saturday, two teams who aren't in the Champions League. But history suggests they might not be as fun to watch this time next year. | 9Sports
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Protesters angry at China's strict lockdowns on Sunday called for President Xi Jinping to quit, in a sign of widening public frustration at the country's zero-COVID policy. Demonstrators in the commercial capital, Shanghai, could be heard chanting, "Xi Jinping! Step down! CCP (Chinese Communist Party)! Step down!" "I'm here because I love my country, but I don't love my government... I want to be able to go out freely, but I can't. Our COVID-19 policy is a game and is not based on science or reality," said one protester, Shaun Xiao. Protesters were seen holding up blank sheets of paper at rallies, symbolizing their protest against Chinese censorship. China reported a fifth straight daily record of new local cases of 40,052 on Monday, up from 39,506 a day earlier. At least two protesters were detained on Monday, the AFP news agency cited their reporters as having noticed police officials leading people away from a protest site in Shanghai. Protesters rallied amid heavy police presence, while law enforcement officials barred people passing by from taking pictures or recording videos, according to AFP. Several people were detained and taken away by bus on Sunday as well. Weibo, China's heavily censored Twitter-like platform, makes no mention of protest rallies in either Shanghai or Beijing. Police used pepper spray to drive away demonstrators in Shanghai, but hours later residents returned to the same spot, only for police to break up their protest for a second time. Video footage posted to social media showed BBC journalist Edward Lawrence being arrested while filming the Shanghai protest. The footage shows Lawrence being charged at by several officers who then dragged him to the ground before pulling him up with his hands tied behind his back. The BBC said Chinese police assaulted and detained Lawrence, before later releasing him after several hours. "The BBC is extremely concerned about the treatment of our journalist Ed Lawrence, who was arrested and handcuffed while covering the protests in Shanghai," a spokesperson for the British public service broadcaster said in a statement. "He was held for several hours before being released. During his arrest, he was beaten and kicked by the police. This happened while he was working as an accredited journalist," the spokesperson added. The latest protests erupted after a fire broke out Thursday and killed at least 10 people in an apartment building in Urumqi in the northwestern Xinjiang region, where some people have been locked in their homes for four months. The tragedy spurred a wave of angry questions online about whether firefighters or people trying to escape were blocked by locked doors or other COVID measures. In a rare direct challenge to the ruling Communist Party, the demonstrations have spread to at least seven other cities Sunday, including the capital Beijing, Wuhan and Chengdu. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video In Beijing, a group of about 200 people gathered in a park on the capital's east side and held up blank sheets of paper, a symbol of defiance against the ruling party's pervasive censorship. About 2,000 students at Xi's alma mater, Tsinghua University in Beijing, gathered to demand an easing of anti-COVID controls, according to social media posts. Other postings said there were also demonstrations at 50 universities across China. In the central megacity of Wuhan, where the coronavirus first emerged, multiple video livestreams showed crowds walking through the streets cheering, but they were quickly censored. Other footage showed protesters smashing through metal barricades, overturning COVID testing tents and demanding an end to lockdowns. A large crowd also gathered in the southwestern metropolis of Chengdu, according to videos on social media. "We don't want lifelong rulers. We don't want emperors," the crowd chanted, in reference to Xi, who has scrapped presidential term limits and could now rule for life. "I joined the protest because I was dissatisfied with the government's imposition of lockdowns, the government's abuse of power, the strict online censorship, the covering up of truth in the Xinjiang fire and to show solidarity with people in Shanghai," a protester told DW's William Yang. Another protester said that the lockdown "has been too long and it has cost people their freedom and jobs," which is why he was taking part in the demonstrations. Others complained government assistance had been scant at a time when people were reaching into their savings to cover expenses like mortgages and cars. Earlier this week, protests turned violent at the world's biggest iPhone factory in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou. Social media footage showed workers being beaten by police. The facility was placed into lockdown last month, with many workers forced to sleep inside for weeks. Beijing has stuck with Xi's zero-COVID policy even as much of the world has lifted most restrictions. While low by global standards, China's case numbers have hit record highs for days, with 39,506 domestic infections recorded Sunday. The government has defended the policy as life-saving and necessary to prevent the health care system from being overwhelmed, and has vowed to continue with it. rm, sri, mm/ar, fb (AFP, AP, Reuters) | 8Society
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Turkey is stepping up its security footprint in Africa after over a decade of strategically expanding its economic and cultural influence on the continent. The government has recently inked a number of security agreements, particularly in West Africa, and arms exports to Africa have exploded. Turkey's defense and aerospace exports to the continent grew more than fivefold, to $460.6 million, in 2021 — up from $82.9 million in 2020. Turkey's share of Africa's arms market is still tiny at 0.5%. But the rapid growth of defense sales is "striking," according to a 2022 study on Turkey's security diplomacy in Africa by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). Against a backdrop of growing Islamist insurgencies in both East and West Africa, as well as domestic conflicts, governments are upping their defense spending. Turkey is proving a reliable alternative to traditional arms exporters, such as Russia, China, France and the United States. For African governments, "Turkey provides a means of actually purchasing military hardware," Abel Abate Demissie, an associate fellow at the British think tank Chatham House, told DW. Turkish arms are relatively cheap, have shorter delivery times and come free of "bureaucratic hurdles" such as political or human rights conditions, Abel said from Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. The media aide to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari praised Turkish defense technology in a statement in late 2021, saying it would accelerate efforts to rid the country "of pockets of terrorists and the menace of kidnappers and bandits." African nations are most interested in buying Turkish-manufactured armored vehicles, naval equipment, infantry weapons and drones, according to the SWP study. "In Africa, wherever we went, they asked us for unarmed and armed drones," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after returning from a 2021 trip to the continent. African nations that have already taken delivery of Turkish-manufactured drones include Somalia, Togo, Niger, Nigeria and Ethiopia — although the drone sales to Ethiopia have attracted Western criticism after the government used them to attack civilians in the Tigray conflict. Several others have reportedly placed orders, although Turkey's popular Bayraktar drone currently has a three-year waiting list. Turkey's drones are cheap compared to US or Israeli versions and easy to operate. But a big selling point is that they are battle-proven, said Yunus Turhan, an analyst of Turkey Africa relations at Haci Bayram Veli University in Turkey. Turkish unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been used "very effectively" in Syria, Libya and in Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, he said. Most recently, the Bayraktar TB2 armed drones have gained fame in Ukraine for destroying large numbers of Russian tanks. For Turkey, Africa is potentially huge market for Ankara's emerging defense and aerospace industry, which boasted some 1,500 companies in 2020 compared to just 56 in 2002. At least 15 African nations also operate armored vehicles, made by several competing Turkish firms. Last month a Turkish shipyard laid the keel for two new offshore patrol vessels for Nigeria's navy while another Turkish aerospace company will send six attack helicopters. African nations aren't just interested in Turkey's arms, though. There's also a "huge demand" for security assistance, said Ovigwe Eguegu, a Nigerian-based political analyst for Development Reimagined, an international consultancy Turkey has signed military-related pacts with the majority of African countries, mainly in West and East Africa (as shown in the map below). While the deals vary in scope, they can include technical visits to research centers, personnel exchanges between institutions and companies, and training. Its longest-standing involvement is in Somalia, where Turkey operates its biggest foreign base, Camp TURKSOM, and where the Turkish government has boasted of training a third of Somalia's 15,000-strong army in the fight against al-Shabab. Nigerian military personnel have also undergone combat drone instruction in Turkey, while Ankara has been training Kenyan police officers since 2020. Turkey's experience fighting counterinsurgency is welcome, and, as a Muslim-majority nation without colonial baggage, it enjoys a high level of trust on the continent, Eguegu said. Plus, because of its NATO membership, deepening ties with Turkey comes at "a low diplomatic cost" for African countries. Erdogan, who has visited more African countries than any non-African leader, has even redefined Turkey as an "Afro-Eurasian state," Eguegu pointed out. "By connecting its identity with Africa, it's a way to make itself almost a neutral partner of African countries." But it's in the terrorist-hit Sahel countries in West Africa and Central Africa where Turkey is making its latest push to extend its influence. Turkey gave the G5 Sahel Joint Force (made up of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger) a $5 million contribution for the fight against terrorism in 2018. It has since signed military cooperation and defense agreements with Niger, Nigeria, Togo and Senegal. "We see these types of requests from West African countries, because they have huge security challenges across the Sahel, where lots of countries aren't in control of large swaths of their territories," Eguegu said. The 2021 Turkey-Africa summit attracted 16 African heads of state and more than 100 ministers. This shows that the continent is increasingly attaching strategic importance to Turkey, said Senegal-based peace and security analyst Aissatou Kante, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, an African think tank Though African nations are obviously interested in diversifying their partnerships, including in the security field, Kante said there was a danger in seeing defense agreements, such as those signed with Turkey, as the only solution to Africa's security crises. The revival of defense agreements raises concerns about "an increasing militarization of states facing multiple threats," Kante said. Edited by: Keith Walker | 7Politics
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When global coronavirus lockdowns and economic disruptions closed schools and curtailed millions of families' income, an alarming increase in child labor across developing nations made headlines. But even before the pandemic, the number of children forced to work was on the rise. A report by the International Labor Organization found that 160 million children around the world are engaged in child labor — nearly one child in 10. Using data that predates the pandemic, the report revealed that the declines in child labor made since 2000 have reversed. "The new estimates are a wake-up call," ILO Director-General Guy Ryder said in a statement. "We cannot stand by while a new generation of children is put at risk." Similar to other recent evaluations conducted by children's rights groups, the report paints a grim picture: More than half of child workers take on hazardous jobs that pose a direct threat to their health and safety, such as mining and farm work. Younger children, between the ages of 5 and 11, account for just over half of the total number of child laborers. The biggest increase recorded in the ILO report was seen in sub-Saharan Africa. That's largely because "development in those countries has not kept up with population growth," according to Furio Rosati, a senior researcher at IZA Institute of Labor Economics. With more children being born into poor households and a general lack of government support, he said the kids are too often pushed into the workforce to support their families. Lack of government support is one of the reasons for the increase in child labor, according to Human Rights Watch Children's Rights Advocacy Director Jo Becker. "Governments are not providing adequate assistance for families that are struggling to meet their basic needs," Becker said. "Even though we know that this is a tool that was really successful in many countries in reducing child labor in the past." Becker oversaw a study published in May showing that monthly cash allowances of $1 per child could spare tens of thousands of children from taking risky, grueling jobs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, reports done by Human Rights Watch and children advocacy groups recorded additional cases of child labor in middle-income countries, such as India. A focus on the coronavirus pandemic also made it harder to trace child labor in many countries. "Following the lockdowns and COVID restriction measures, most governments scaled back their monitoring programs, which made it easier for the employers to exploit child workers," Becker said. "So many more cases remain unseen." Reports from the ILO and rights groups show that the future of millions of more children will be in jeopardy if government spending on children and families in need is not increased. But a boost to child welfare support appears unlikely due to the prospect of shrinking national budgets and because loan creditors like IMF tend to encourage, and in some cases require, low-income countries hard hit by the pandemic’s economic fallout to adopt strict austerity measures. "In theory, austerity measures aim to cut down on government spendings without curbing the support to the poor and deteriorating their livelihood, but in reality that is very often not the case," Rosati said. Child workers in lower-income countries will most likely continue to suffer, he said. "At the moment, governments and international organizations allocate most of their resources to fighting the pandemic, which in turn, limits the little support provided for the poor households," Rosati said. Some countries that had made progress in education and school enrollments in the past could see those gains disappear. "As many jobs in middle-income countries such as India are still lost, many children, most of whom are now in primary and secondary school will be forced to halt education, enter the informal job market and work as low-skilled workers," Rosati said. If that happens, there could be another surge in the number of children forced to work, he said. | 8Society
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The Nobel Foundation said in a statement on Thursday that prizewinners would receive awards in their home countries rather than attend a banquet in Stockholm. The body said it was making the decision due to uncertainty about the further course of the pandemic and the possibilities for international travel that come with it While prizewinners will not be present, a ceremony is to be held for the respective presentations in the scientific categories as well as in literature at Stockholm's City Hall on Nobel Day, December 10. Meanwhile, the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, is keeping open the possibility of welcoming laureates in person. The prizes for achievement in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, peace, and economics are to be announced between October 4 to 11. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Here's a look at the latest coronavirus news from the rest of the world: The United States Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized a booster dose of BioNTech-Pfizer coronavirus vaccine for several at-risk groups, including Americans 65 years of age and older, those at risk of severe disease and people who are regularly exposed to the virus. The FDA approval comes weeks after US President Joe Biden's administration announced a sweeping plan that would allow nearly all American adults to get a third shot to amp up protection as the country battles to contain the spread of the highly infectious delta variant. Meanwhile, Moderna Chief Executive Stephane Bancel said as vaccine production increased across the world, the pandemic could be over in a year. The death of a 16-year-old in Brazil who received a dose of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine was linked to the shot but due to a prior blood clot condition, health regulator Anvisa has said, concluding the investigation. Last week, the federal government sought to halt vaccinations for adolescents while the fatality was being investigated as a suspected adverse event. However, several states have vowed to continue. The BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine is the only one approved for minors in the country. Japan is set to double its vaccine donation quota to nearly 60 million doses, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said on Thursday. This comes in addition to the 30 million doses and $1 billion the country has pledged to the COVAX program run by the GAVI Vaccine Alliance and the World Health Organization. "Japan has provided approximately 23 million doses of COVID vaccine to various countries and regions across the world, which is the third-largest provision of vaccines in the world so far," Suga told the conference. Authorities in South Korea have warned vacationers to get tested upon return, even in cases with mild COVID-19 type symptoms. The country has been grappling with a fourth wave of the virus since early July but some allowances were made for gatherings during the Chuseok holiday week. The capital city, Seoul, reported 1,400 daily confirmed cases on average last week, registering an 11% hike from the previous week. Vaccine developer Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise in China is looking to begin a large trial for its nasal spray-based coronavirus vaccine candidate next month. According to an entry on the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, the company will aim to recruit 40,000 adult participants for the phase 3 clinical trial. The EU expects to decide in early October whether to approve booster doses of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine for people aged over 16, a senior official from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said Thursday. Germany has recorded 10,696 new COVID-19 infections, taking the country's total tally to 4,171,666, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases. With 115 deaths reported, the fatalities have risen to 93,238. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Ukraine announced stricter lockdown curbs on Thursday after a steady increase in cases was reported. Under the new measures, authorities will restrict large events and occupancy at gyms, cinemas and cultural sites. The government also plans to make vaccinations mandatory for those in occupations like teaching and employment in state institutions. jsi, see, rc/sms (Reuters, AP, AFP, dpa) | 5Health
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Many European football coaches have made a name for themselves in Africa: the Frenchman Claude Le Roy, nicknamed "the White Wizard," the German Winfried Schäfer, and more recently, Herve Renard, another Frenchman who won the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) with Zambia and Ivory Coast. For the most part, African coaches have been forced to settle for interim positions, often being replaced before the major competitions came around. "We felt powerless and hurt by these choices," Mali's national coach Mohamed Magassouba told DW. "To those above, we were not good enough to manage our national teams. No matter what we did, we were not supported." This lack of confidence in African coaches has often been explained through the prism of results. The statistics point slightly in favor of foreign coaches, but according to Magassouba, this is misleading, with foreign coaches given more support and backing than their native counterparts. "Expats have not won more competitions than native coaches. In addition, they have always had more financial help, and this has made their work easier," he said. Of the 32 editions of the AFCON since its creation in 1957, 15 have been won by native coaches. Of these, Charles Kumi Gyamfi of Ghana and Hassan Shehata of Egypt lifted the trophy three times each with their respective nations. For some observers of African football, another reason that coaches from the continent have been overlooked in favor of foreigners is a lack of ambition. Malian journalist Bakary Cisse, who has been covering sports for more than 20 years in the country, believes they have earned that reputation through their style of work. "Native coaches in general are not respected," he told DW. "Even when they have the required skills and the same qualifications as Europeans, they don't take their opportunities when they get them." Coached by Magassouba, Mali will participate in this year's AFCON, which gets underway in Cameroon on Sunday, and have just qualified for the playoffs for the 2022 World Cup. Appointed initially as caretaker coach in 2017, Magassouba was given the job on a permanent basis in 2019. His vast experience includes coaching Daring Club Motema Pembe during the 1990s, one of the most successful periods in the Congolese club's history. As Mali's national coach, he manages not only the senior team but all youth levels of the national setup. The cultivation of a clear identity for the national team is crucial to him. "Since I took over, we have changed the mentality of the players based on the spirit," he explained. "Then, we focused on how our players are developed to establish how we want to play." Native coaches are, in his opinion, the most qualified to understand how African players think and what they need to perform, and Mali's approach has inspired other African football associations. The new policy of developing young coaches on the continent is a perfect example of this approach. According to Pascal Yougbare, technical director of the Burkina Faso national team, the country has been "putting the focus on the development of native coaches for the past 10 years, with the support of FIFA and CAF." What has changed is the "awareness of the country's own potential and the need to develop local resources," he said. African football officials and coaches finally seem to have found a way to work together, and Magassouba believes the results will come. However, he has pleaded for African coaches to have the right to learn from their mistakes. "Let us make mistakes," he urged. "Through our mistakes, we will be able to correct them, we will understand better, and we will be able to progress instead of relying on expats." For the moment, these choices seem to be benefiting Burkina Faso, Mali and other national teams, such as Algeria, who won the last edition of the AFCON with Djamel Belmadi in charge. These coaches will be aiming to confirm their qualities in Cameroon in the hope that their national associations continue to put their faith in them. Edited by: Michael Da Silva | 9Sports
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Last month, consumer prices in Germany rose at their fastest pace since 1993, according to official data released on Thursday. The annual inflation rate continued to soar for the fourth month in a row, rising to 4.5% in October, with energy prices shooting up 18.6%, estimates from the German federal statistics agency Destatis showed. It is the energy price hike that has been cited by experts as the main reason behind the overall increase in consumer prices. In September, prices had risen in Germany by 4.1% year on year. "There are a number of reasons for the high inflation rates since July 2021," Destatis said in a statement, citing a temporary reduction in value-added tax (VAT) in 2020 and the introduction of CO2 pricing since January 2021. Europe's biggest economy introduced the VAT reduction to mitigate the impact of lockdowns implemented because of the coronavirus pandemic. Gas prices have soared across the continent in recent months. Demand has increased sharply as European economies emerge from the impact of the pandemic. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Official estimates published Wednesday showed the German government expects inflation to rise to 3% in 2021 before subsiding in the coming years. While inflation is helping firms to improve corporate margins that have suffered due to the pandemic, consumers are being hit in the pocket. On Tuesday, European Union ministers were unable to agree upon new measures aimed at stemming the tide of increasing energy bills. Some EU countries, among them France and Spain, are calling for structural reform of the bloc's energy market, while others have taken the stance that the crisis is only temporary and does not call for radical changes. Nine EU member states, including Germany, are steadfast in their belief that an overhaul of the electricity market is not necessary. jsi/wd (Reuiers, AFP) | 0Business
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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni addressed parliament on Tuesday for the first time since she got the job. Meloni, the leader of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy party, has formed the country's most right-wing government since Benito Mussolini. On Tuesday, in an apparent bid to reassure Western allies, Meloni sought to distance herself from fascism. "I have never felt any sympathy or closeness to anti-democratic regimes... fascism included," Meloni told lawmakers. She vowed to fight "any form of racism, antisemitism, political violence [and] discrimination." Meloni has been keen on moving her party from the political fringes. Ahead of the election campaign, she apparently sent out internal memos to party groups instructing them to refrain from making extreme statements and references to fascism. Still, concern has grown in Italy and among its neighbors over civil rights, as well as Rome's involvement in alliances like NATO. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video "A center-right government will never curtail the existing liberties of citizens and firms," Meloni said in parliament. "The proof of facts will show, even on civil rights and abortion, who was lying and who was saying the truth during the election campaign concerning our true intentions," she added. Meloni has appointed an ultra-conservative Catholic, Maria Roccella, as Italy's minister for family, birthrates and equal opportunities. Roccella had pledged in 2018 to work against legalizing same-sex civil unions. Meloni, who has long called for restricting migration, also said on Tuesday that the government wants to stop illegal immigration and human trafficking. "We do not intend in any way to question the right of asylum for those fleeing war and persecution," she said. Meloni had been known to be a euroskeptic politican. But she told lawmakers that the new government is committed to the EU and NATO. "This government will respect the [EU] rules currently in force and at the same time offer its contribution to change those that have not worked," she said. Her predecessor, Mario Draghi, was one of the strongest supporters of EU sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Meloni said the Italian government would "continue to be a reliable partner of NATO in supporting Ukraine." fb/aw (AFP, AP, Reuters) | 7Politics
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On his first day in office, Joe Biden repealed the Trump administration's 2017 immigration restriction, known as the Muslim ban, on travel and visas for citizens of predominantly Muslim countries. The list would grow to include 13 nations. In Africa, this affected Somalia, Nigeria, Sudan, Eritrea, Egypt, Libya and Tanzania. "This ban, which restricted issuance of visas to individuals from many Muslim and African countries, was nothing less than a stain on our nation," Jake Sullivan, the incoming national security adviser, said of the ban in a call with reporters. Biden has also vowed to repeal a government policy known as the global gag rule, which effectively blocks US funding for foreign aid organizations providing information about abortion or organizations lobbying for change to abortion laws. Trump had reinstated the policy in 2017 and also expanded it. The policy hampers NGOs working on a wide range of women's health services in Africa. "Just those immediate changes shift the landscape and interactions between the US and Africa," said Sithembile Mbete, a political science lecturer at South Africa's University of Pretoria. Trump's refusal to recognize Biden's election victory in November and his failure to attend Wednesday's inauguration has been a talking point in Zimbabwe, where elections are often associated with violence and crackdowns on dissent. Harare-based writer Chengetai Guta said Trump's behavior could send the wrong signals to future leaders. "The exit of Donald Trump presented a true test of democracy and the power of institutions in America," he told DW. "But sadly, I perceive that it may be used as an excuse for heavy handedness by many dictators." For Kenyan accountant Sarah Mwangi, Trump's questioning of Barack Obama's US citizenship made his administration particularly unpalatable — especially considering Kenya's embrace of Obama, whose father was Kenyan. "This man [Trump] was a tyrant. He started with accusing Obama of having a Kenyan birth certificate. I doubt there is any Kenyan…any African who supported that tyrant," she said. "I think Biden is the answer that all Kenyans have been waiting for, Trump won't be missed." If Trump stands for "the rupture or the break in US-Africa policy," the Biden administration will be "much more engaged with African partners," believes Grant T. Harris, a former Africa advisor in Obama's administration. In an interview with "The Africa Report" news magazine late last year, Harris said he believed the new administration would "understand the importance of development assistance, and the importance of being a strong and reliable partner." Part of the problem with Trump, Harris told "The Africa Report", was that his administration "didn't understand why what's happening in African states is so important to US national security." America's security engagement with Africa has previously been tied to its counter-terror agenda, points out South African political scientist Sithembile Mbete. Under Biden, this could well change. "I think there is going to be a more sophisticated interaction between development assistance, development aid, diplomacy and foreign policy," she told DW in a phone interview. Mbete adds the US has been losing "strategic" ground in Africa to countries like China, Russia, India and others during the Trump administration. As the US tries to build its strategic capabilities and importance in global politics, Biden needs to have a coherent focus on Africa, with its youthful population and growing markets, Mbete believes. But considering that Biden's tenure begins in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, political marketing expert Kobby Mensah from the University of Ghana warns that Biden might still might put "America first." "Although Biden had demonstrated he's going to extend a friendship to the world that is different from the Trump government, there's no doubt that his interest will be very much to secure the health of the American people," Mensah told DW. For Gnaka Lagoke, a professor at Lincoln University in Philadelphia, more US involvement in Africa is necessarily a good thing. "We risk returning to an imperialist America capable of causing wars to defend its interests, as was the case in Libya," he told DW, referring to US military intervention which saw the removal of long-time Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. In addition, if the US administration becomes more engaged with Africa, Lagoke thinks it would probably promote its own interests first. "The major powers are engaged in competition for African resources and there's no doubt Joe Biden believes supporting American companies would give America a competitive advantage over China, France or Germany," Lagoke said. In Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari congratulated Biden and said he looked forward to working with him to tackle "global terrorism" and "expanding trade". But Nigerian political and public affairs analyst Abdulrahman Abu Hamisu has praise for ex-president Trump's hands-off approach to Africa: "I want to commend President Trump for the fact that he didn't escalate the wars across Africa that would have led to the downfall of any regime like our brother Obama by overthrowing Gaddafi." Vice-President Kamala Harris is the first Black person, and the first woman, to hold the role. Her journey to the White House and status as a minority member has captured people's imaginations in Africa. But on a political level, political scientist Sithembile Mbete doubts Harris role will change much for Africa. "I don't think there are any expectations this will lead to favorable engagement with Africa," Mbete said. "That didn't happen under Obama, and it would be naive to expect that having a Black woman would affect US-Africa policy." | 7Politics
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It was never going to be easy to find common ground between developed and developing countries, plastic producers and those who face the impact of its pollution, but it had to happen. Virgin plastic production has risen from two million tons per year in 1950, to 367 million in 2020 and is projected to exceed a billion tons annually by 2050. At the same time, there has been a sharp rise in plastic leakage into the environment in recent years, and the trend is only set to continue. Approximately seven of the estimated 9.2 billion tons of plastics produced between 1950 and 2017 is now waste, and three-quarters of that has been dumped at landfills or is accumulating in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.
Until now, there has been no overarching approach to tackling this crisis. The current regulations are fragmented and unable to meet the severity of the situation head-on. A combination of voluntary approaches and bans on selected items offer no match for corporate greenwashing and unabated plastic production.
The toxic legacy resulting from rampant overproduction of virgin plastics and their lifecycles is irreversible. But business-as-usual doesn't have to continue. In advance of the negotiations, two approaches were on the table. One was based on reducing production and consumption while simultaneously improving the way plastics are designed for increased reusability and recyclability. The other focussed solely on plastic pollution in the marine environment and offered a narrow scope for potential interventions. In the end, after long nights of negotiating, the former won out. It was clear that single-use plastic bans and waste management would not effectively change the course of plastic pollution and planetary health for good. Broadly speaking, NGOs were happy with the result, which shows that the narrative has moved beyond the narrow scope of considering the issue as "just plastic in the oceans". It has now been officially recognised as a problem that spans the entire lifecycle of plastics and their impact on all environments and human health. Critically, the mandate also includes language around sustainable production and consumption of plastics, as well as product design and the environmentally sound management of waste.
Moreover, we have the prospect of a legal agreement that could eventually monitor and reduce the rampant production of virgin plastics, while simultaneously taking steps to phase out problematic products and financially supporting developing countries on the path to implementation. Now that the gavel has dropped on the decision to take this work forward, we are preparing for the challenging task of ensuring that ambition during negotiations remains both high and urgent. We are not yet out of the woods, but at least we have the map. Christina Dixon is Deputy Ocean Campaign Lead at the Environmental Investigation Agency. In her work as a campaigner, she has been focussed on plastics and pollution from fisheries since 2013. | 6Nature and Environment
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Hundreds gathered in Hamburg on Friday to pay tribute to flood victims and call on politicians to act immediately to deter the most harmful effects of climate change. Luisa Neubauer, a leading German climate activist in the Fridays for Future movement most closely associated with Greta Thurnberg, told the dpa news agency: "The climate crisis is here, it is unmistakable." She said the floods that wrought havoc on western and southern Germany last week showed how "prosperity that has been accumulated over decades" can be washed away in a matter of moments. Neubauer told dpa that politicians appeared largely oblivious to the effects of climate change. Promises made are not promises kept, she said. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video "We also see that these proclamations often vanish into thin air just when it comes to putting them into action," she said. Neubauer was joined by approximately 500 fellow climate change activists in a march through central Hamburg. The 170 known victims of the floods were remembered with a minute of silence and donations were collected for the survivors. Annika Rittmann, spokeswoman for "Fridays for Future" in Hamburg, expressed disappointment in Armin Laschet, the Christian Democrats candidate for chancellor and currently the state premier of North Rhine Westphalia, which saw the worst of the flooding. At one point while touring the devastation, Laschet was caught on camera laughing with colleagues in the background of a shot as German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier delivered remarks.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Claudia Kemfert, an economist at the German Institute for Economic Economic Research (DIW), sees opportunity in the aftermath. The floods, she said, could lead to positive transformations in society, most notably in terms of preventative projects designed to limit future damages. "Every euro that we invest now saves 15 euros," she said. ar/msh (dpa) | 6Nature and Environment
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Japan has welcomed the appointment of its first minister tasked specifically with combating the country's loneliness and isolation crisis that has exacerbated during the coronavirus pandemic. In response to worrying figures on suicide and social withdrawal, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga assigned 71-year-old Tetsushi Sakamoto to the newly created post in February. Many health professionals hailed the move, as Japan sees mental health decline among the elderly, working women, part-time workers and the unemployed. But Sakamoto has a huge task on his hands. A long-serving member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, the new minister of loneliness said Japan would introduce policy measures to alleviate social isolation. "It is essential that we get a firm understanding of the actual nature of loneliness and isolation and then establish a system of planning, checking and acting for related policy measures in each related administrative field," Sakamoto said during a meeting of the new ministry in March. Sakamoto said the very first task is to identify who are already isolated or lonely as well as those at risk of being cut off from society. Other countries, such as the UK, have similarly appointed senior officials tasked with integrating socially isolated people back into society and Sakamoto said Japan hopes to learn from those countries' experiences. Vickie Skorji, director of the Tokyo-based TELL Lifeline, applauded the initiative as a "positive first step" — but warns there remains a great deal of work to do. "Certain groups in Japanese society have been impacted in a more adverse way than others as a result of the pandemic, which has made a lot more people feel isolated," she told DW. Japan has imposed a series of nationwide and localized state of emergency orders since the pandemic first broke out more than a year ago. The national government is expected to announce another state of emergency for Japan's two largest cities, Tokyo and Osaka, in the coming days. Authorities are calling on restaurants and bars to close down before 8 p.m., while cinemas and karaoke bars operate on restricted hours and companies are encouraged to have employees work from home. Hundreds of thousands of people have been furloughed from their jobs, been put on reduced hours or simply laid off. Students have also reported losing part-time work and worry about paying for their university studies. Those most at risk of income adversity are part-time workers in the entertainment, travel and hospitality industries and women, who are typically in less well-paid jobs in the service sector. Skorji said women have been particularly hard-hit by the impacts of the pandemic. "It is particularly worrying to see suicide numbers rising among women, many of whom have lost their part-time jobs and therefore their incomes and often have an increased workload in the home or are having to take care of elderly relatives," Skorji said. "We are especially seeing single mothers not coping well with these circumstances," she added. In 2010, Japan reported 31,600 suicides, a figure that had been brought down to 20,169 in 2019. In 2020, the number bounced back for the first time in 11 years, reaching 20,919 deaths, according to Health Ministry data. Skorji said mental health care is not available under Japan's national health scheme and is in need of "better resources and support for those in need … on multiple levels." "At least they are looking at the problem now, and that has to be a good first step," she said. Makoto Watanabe, a communications professor at Hokkaido Bunkyo University, warns that men struggling to obtain stable employment are also at risk of being socially marginalized, but that this is nothing new in Japan. "There is a 'lost generation' of thousands of 40- and 50-something men, primarily, who could not get a good job when they left school because the economy was bad and they have just stayed at home ever since," he told DW. "The number of single households and 'hikikomori' — social recluses — has been increasing rapidly for many years and the government should have recognized this far earlier," he added. Watanabe said better support systems must be put in place to first prevent more people from succumbing to isolation during the pandemic and then reintegrate them back into society. But he is not entirely confident that the new ministry of loneliness has the tools to achieve this goal. "I worry that it's just a catchy title with little real experience or knowhow to be able to genuinely help those in need," Watanabe said. "We need to rebuild networks and support systems in our society — but it was clear 30 years ago that Japan was going to have a problem with isolation and loneliness in society, so why was nothing done then?" he said. "This is a good idea, but my feeling is that it comes too late and is mostly made up of vague promises that will be impossible to effectively put into practice." | 8Society
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The US State Department warned China to stop its provocations against Taiwan on Sunday after Chinese jets passed through the island's Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) for three days in a row. "The United States is very concerned by the People's Republic of China's provocative military activity near Taiwan, which is destabilizing, risks miscalculations, and undermines regional peace and stability," US State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement. "We urge Beijing to cease its military, diplomatic, and economic pressure and coercion against Taiwan," he added. A total of 39 Chinese air force aircraft entered Taiwan's air defense zone on Saturday, setting a record for the number of warplanes entering the ADIZ for the second day in a row. Taiwan's Ministry of Defense said that a further 16 planes flew into the zone on Sunday. Taiwan has had an independent government since 1949, but the government in mainland China considers the self-governing democratic island a breakaway province. Taiwan has complained for over a year about repeated missions near it by China's air force. Taiwan's Defense Ministry said that the Chinese aircraft came in two waves on Saturday. During the day, 20 aircraft arrived, followed on Saturday night by a further 19. Most of the aircraft were J-16 and Su-30 fighters, it added. The aircraft on both missions flew near the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands in the southwestern part of its air defense zone, the ministry said, in separate statements late Saturday and early Sunday morning. Taiwanese fighters scrambled on both occasions as a warning. Taiwan's military also deployed missile systems to monitor the Chinese aircraft. Taiwanese Premier Su Tseng-chang commented on Saturday that Chinese air maneuvers on Friday amounted to "bullying." So far, there has been no comment from China. In recent years, China has routinely sent fighter jets toward Taiwan, as Taipei's increasing assertion of independence sparks tensions with Beijing. Last week, in response to Taiwan's efforts to join a regional trade group, the Chinese military flew 24 fighter jets toward Taiwan. In 2020, China made a record 380 incursions into the ADIZ, and so far this year, China has already done so more than 500 times. China has increased the pressure since Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who said she views Taiwan as "already independent," was elected in 2016. Earlier this week, the UK sent a warship to the Taiwan Strait for the first time since 2008. Beijing said the UK was showing "evil intentions to sabotage peace and stability." ab, kmm/aw (Reuters, dpa) | 2Conflicts
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The British government has approved the development of a new nuclear power plant, labeled Sizewell C, to be built in Suffolk in southeast England. French energy utility EDF will be partly funding the project which will reportedly cost around €23.5 billion ($24 billion) to build. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Britain said it would give €117 million to help in the construction and would also have a stake in the project. Once complete, the plant would be capable of producing 3.2 gigawatts of electricity, which would power in the region of 6 million households. The British government is aiming to have a quarter of its power needs come by way of nuclear power by 2050. The project's financial director Julia Pyke said the benefits outweigh the costs of construction in the long term. "Sizewell C will give a big boost to jobs and skills in nuclear supply chain companies across the country. It will strengthen the UK's energy security and play a key role in our fight against climate change," Pyke said. Environmentalists have voiced their opposition to the project, with Green Party MP Caroline Lucas calling it a "massive costly white elephant." The activist group Stop Sizewell C said it will consider appealing the decision. "Whether it is the impact on consumers, the massive costs and delays, the outstanding technical questions or the environmental impacts, it remains a bad project and a very bad risk," the group said. Critics of the plant contend that nuclear power is more expensive and will take a long time to build compared to plants harvesting renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. kb/dj (Reuters, AP) | 0Business
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Two suicide blasts at a market in central Baghdad on Thursday killed at least 32 people, according to Iraq's health ministry. The attack wounded an additional 110 people, the ministry said. Some were still in serious condition. Attacks such as this in the Iraqi capital have been rare since the military defeat of the "Islamic State" in Iraq in 2017. The updated death toll makes Thursday's attack the deadliest to hit Baghdad in three years. The first suicide bomber rushed into the market and claimed to feel sick so that people would gather around him. He then detonated an explosive belt, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. A second attacker detonated his bomb as people gathered around the victims of the first attack, the ministry said. Medics and security forces across the capital have been mobilized to respond to the deadly attack. The militarized Green Zone area of the city was closed following the incident. The "Islamic State" group has claimed responsibility for the attack, and officials also pointed towards the militant organization. "This is a terrorist act perpetrated by a sleeper cell of the Islamic State,'' said Tahsin al-Khafaji, spokesman for the Joint Operations Command, which incorporates an array of Iraqi forces. He added that IS "wanted to prove its existence" after suffering many blows in military operations to root out the militants. The United Nations mission in Iraq condemned Thursday's attack as "a despicable act," saying that it won't hamper the country's push towards stability. The United States, Egypt and Jordan also decried the attack, sending their condolences to the victims and their families. Turkey said it was ready to support its "friend and neighbor Iraq in the fight against terrorism." Pope Francis, who is due to visit Iraq in March, released a statement also condemning the attacks as a "senseless act of brutality." The suicide bombings marked the first in three years to target Baghdad's bustling commercial area. A suicide bomb attack took place in the same area in 2018 shortly after then-Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi declared victory over the Islamic State group. rs, kmm, jsi/msh (Reuters, dpa, AFP) To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
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Bowls piled high with ramen, dishes of fried rice, plates of perfectly prepared steak, spaghetti, salad or pizza in Japanese restaurant windows are enticing to the eye and can whet the appetite of the pickiest of eaters. They may be enough to set taste buds tingling, but anyone who attempted to tuck into one of these meals would be in for an unpleasant surprise; they are made entirely of plastic and painstakingly painted to be utterly realistic. Japan has a deserved reputation as a paradise for food-lovers, giving the world cuisine such as sushi and noodles, "okonomiyaki" savoury pancakes, "yakitori" grilled chicken, "shojin ryori" vegetarian dishes and countless others. It has also proved, down the years, to be a voracious adopter of foreign foods, producing Japanese versions of dishes that are native to France, Italy, Spain and every other corner of the world. The downside of all that choice in Japanese cities, however, is that a successful restaurant has to stand out from the competition. This is why life-like replicas of dishes that are available within the restaurant are displayed in the window. The very first "sample models" were made by a manufacturer of anatomical models from Kyoto named Soujiro Nishio. His earliest efforts were made of wax and began appearing in the windows of restaurants around his home town around 1917. The concept caught on, encouraged by the fact that most restaurants of the day did not use menus, and a number of craftsmen began to similarly create models. Takizo Iwasaki is credited with helping the industry take off, setting up "Iwasaki Be-I" plastic food maker in 1932. To this day, it remains the biggest name in the business and provides as much as 60% of all plastic food sold in Japan. "The company was originally set up in Osaka and grew steadily over the following decades," said Yuta Kurokawa, a spokesman for the company, told DW. The firm's very first commercial product was a simple omelette, folded neatly and garnished with tomato sauce. Iwasaki Be-I soon expanded into the lucrative Tokyo market, Kurokawa said, and was able to retain its position as the market leader through the use of innovative materials and techniques. The process of creating the perfect plastic meal is painstaking. First, a restaurant provides a real dish, which is then "deconstructed" by Iwasaki Be-I's technicians and broken down into all its individual elements. Some everyday ingredients in the dish may be in stock, but just as often the real food is used to create a silicone mold. Liquid plastic is then carefully injected into the mold, making sure that no bubbles or imperfections are left, and the "food" is "cooked" at 180 degrees before being left to cool. Practiced staff use a magnifying glass to examine every element of the dish, with any component exhibiting the slightest imperfection rejected. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The next stage of the process is just as exacting, with the countless colorless fish, fruit and vegetables rendered realistic. Teams of painters use delicate sprays to turn a spider crab the required shades of orange, turn all the elements of a vegetable and fried rice dish the correct color and mottle a slice of prime beef. The varied colors of a "tai" sea bream are a challenge, but a block of plain white tofu is more straightforward. The final stage in the process is the precise arrangement of the completed ingredients on a plate or, in the case of what appears to be simmering ramen noodles, in a bowl. Some designs are even more creative; ice cream must appear to be melting on a hot pancake and lots of pasta restaurants want their designs to incorporate a fork that hovers above the plate with spaghetti twisted around it. With competition increasing in the industry, manufacturers have branched out into new areas for their products. Iwasaki Be-I and two other makers opened stores in the Kappabashi district of Tokyo, a long-time location for restaurant supplies from neon signs to tables, industrial stoves, plates and specialist knives. And, of course, sample meals made of plastic. Those same meals have proved irresistible to foreign tourists looking for a truly unique souvenir. Producers do a roaring trade in miniaturized versions of some of its ingredients or entire dishes like iced doughnuts, fried eggs, a slice of chocolate cake, a bunch of grapes - that are sold as key rings or mobile phone straps. "I think spaghetti dishes are probably our most popular designs," Kurokawa said, although he admitted that business has been bad over the last 18 months due to the coronavirus pandemic. "Orders and sales have definitely gone down and we understand that it is very difficult for restaurants in Japan at the moment," he said. "The government is asking restaurants and bars to shut early and people not to go out so much, so there are fewer orders for new models." "But the vaccine is coming out now and we are hopeful that more people will soon be able to eat out again," he said. "And when that happens, restaurants that have been quiet for more than a year will want to win back their customers." To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video | 8Society
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The US firearms lobbying group, the National Rifle Association (NRA), lost its bid to declare bankruptcy on Tuesday, hampering an attempt to avoid a lawsuit in New York. Federal Judge Harlin Hale issued his decision from Dallas, Texas, saying that the gun-rights group had not filed for Chapter 11 protection in good faith, but rather to avoid oversight by New York Attorney General Letitia James. A successful bankruptcy declaration would have given the NRA an "unfair litigation advantage," the judge said. The group filed for bankruptcy in January after the state of New York brought financial fraud and misconduct charges back in August. Judge Hale singled out the chief executive of the NRA, Wayne Lapierre, for his lack of input from other members within the organization when filing the bankruptcy claim. "Excluding so many people from the process of deciding to file for bankruptcy, including the vast majority of the board of directors, the chief financial officer and the general counsel, is nothing less than shocking," Hale wrote. "The question the court is faced with is whether the existential threat facing the NRA is the type of threat that the Bankruptcy Code is meant to protect against," Hale added. "The court believes it is not." LaPierre appeared to accept the decision, saying that the NRA would stay independent "even as we remain in New York to confront our adversaries." To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Attorney General James welcomed the court's decision, saying on Twitter that: "The NRA does not get to dictate if and where it will answer for its actions, and our case will continue in New York court." The New York lawsuit claimed that the NRA and LaPierre had used money from dues and donations for their own "personal piggy bank." According to the charges, they had spent tens of millions of dollars on themselves, violating laws governing non-profit organizations. The group, a close ally of the Republican Party, decided to reorganize in the more gun-friendly state of Texas and to reform as a limited liability corporation with nonprofit status. In its bankruptcy filing, the NRA listed between $100 million (€82.8 million) and $500 million in assets and a similar amount in liabilities. The group was also forced to fire dozens of employees and cancel its annual convention — with a big hit on fundraising — during the coronavirus pandemic. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video ab/wmr (Reuters, AP) | 7Politics
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Researchers say the amount of electricity generated from burning fossil fuels has likely peaked worldwide, as emerging markets invest in clean and cheap renewables over coal, oil and gas. That is the finding of a report published Wednesday by environmental think tanks Carbon Tracker, in the UK, and the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) in India. The researchers say that emerging markets will provide 88% of the growth in electricity demand over the next two decades, and say these markets are increasingly leapfrogging polluting energy sources that are uncompetitive. Clearly fossil fuel plants haven't disappeared, said Arunabha Ghosh, CEO of CEEW and co-author of the report. But the new electricity capacity is "almost entirely likely to be non-fossil fuels." About one in every nine people on the planet lack access to electricity, mostly in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Leaders of poorer countries have historically had to choose between raising living standards and protecting the climate and people's health. Two recent studies estimate that between 1 million and 8 million people die each year from breathing in dirty air that comes from burning coal, oil and gas. But as the cost of renewable energy plummets, that trade-off is starting to vanish. Countries like Kenya and Nigeria — with fast-growing populations but low emissions — could skip fossil fuel electricity altogether and avoid the destructive pathway taken in many industrialized countries. Other countries like India and China could switch from coal to solar and wind without relying on fossil gas. The report draws an analogy with the telecommunications industry, where emerging markets went from a small amount of fixed line phones directly to mobile without wasting money on unnecessary physical infrastructure. A similar shift has been seen in banking. But another report finds that shorter-term electricity trends are worrying. Renewable electricity generation continues to grow strongly but cannot keep up with increasing demand, according to a separate report published Thursday by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Despite the rapid increases, the authors wrote, renewables are expected to serve only around half of the projected growth in global demand in 2021 and 2022. "Fossil fuels fill most of the gap," tweeted IEA executive director Fatih Birol. The agency projects a rebound in coal that would surpass pre-pandemic levels in 2021 and could reach an all-time high in 2022. Such a rise would push the world further away from its target of keeping global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius — and ideally no higher than 1.5 C (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) — compared to pre-industrial levels. Current policies put the world on track for a catastrophic 3 degrees Celsius of warming this century, but scientists caution that 4 degrees is still possible if the climate is particularly sensitive to the sunlight-trapping gases released when burning fossil fuels. A landmark IEA report published in May charted out a path to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. As well as a massive expansion of renewable energy, the policy shifts include near-term changes like banning the sale of fossil fuel boilers by 2025 and new combustion engine vehicles by 2035. Starting immediately, world leaders would have to stop approving oil fields, gas fields and coal mines. They would also have to stop approving new coal plants. The CEEW report finds that renewable sources like solar and wind have become the cheapest source of new electricity in 90% of the world. Electricity from burning fossil fuels peaked in rich countries in 2007 and is down 20% since then. It peaked in South Africa in 2007, Russia in 2012, Chile in 2013, Thailand in 2015 and Turkey in 2017. "The sun is shining bright in many of these countries because the economics is going to support this for quite a long time," said Marcelo Mena-Carrasco, a former Chilean environment minister who is also the director of the Climate Action Center at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso. "Renewable energy provides many more jobs for megawatt installed. Countries will seize on this opportunity." But there are other barriers. The report says that while renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels over their lifetime, and the costs of building a wind farm or solar plant have fallen enough to compete with new fossil fuel plants, the costs of getting the capital to build them are still high. This is because banks are still lending to companies building coal, oil and gas plants at lower interest rates than for solar and wind projects. Some governments are locked into multiyear contracts with energy companies that they can't quickly escape from. Of the $2.6 trillion (€2.2 trillion) invested in renewable energy between 2010 and 2019, only China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa — along with several rich countries — managed to secure investments exceeding $20 billion. In other words, the authors wrote, "money does not flow yet to where the sun shines the most or the wind blows the hardest." The report finds that vested interests like fossil fuel lobbies are holding back change. This is a particular issue for energy exporters like Russia and Saudi Arabia. But there are also about 20 million people who work extracting fossil fuels — about 1% of the global workforce — who rely on industries like coal mining for jobs. Climate justice activists like the Fridays for Future protest group have called for a "just transition" to ensure the costs of a new energy system do not fall on the poorest. Lawmakers in Europe have an investment plan to mobilize €65-75 billion between 2021 and 2027 to regions that rely on fossil fuels so that "no one is left behind." Like signing a trade deal, there will be winners and losers, said Ghosh from the CEEW. "But if the overall gains are greater than the losses, you are able to compensate for this. That is exactly what needs to be done with the energy transition." Otherwise, he added, "we'd never have had cars, we'd only have horse-drawn carriages. And we'd never have had electricity, we'd still be reading Moby Dick because we'd be running after whale blubber for lighting." | 6Nature and Environment
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Ethiopia's Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed urged citizens to take up arms to defeat forces in the country's northern Tigray region, as forces tied to the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) continue to advance. "Now is the right time for all capable Ethiopians who are of age to join the Defense Forces, Special Forces and militias and show your patriotism," read a statement released by his office Tuesday. The call comes just two months after Abiy declared a unilateral "humanitarian cease-fire" on June 28, to facilitate aid access to the Tigray region where the UN estimates 400,000 people face famine-like conditions. Ethiopian forces were sent to the northern Tigray region last November to dislodge the influential regional ruling party TPLF, after attacks on federal army camps. The TPLF dominated Ethiopian politics for nearly 30 years before Abiy came to power in 2018. Though Abiy promised to swiftly bring the TPLF to heel, his plan went awry when TPLF forces scored a surprising victory by recapturing the regional capital, Mekele, in June. Meanwhile, the TPLF, who say they only seek to secure their region, end fighting and see the prime minister step down, have pushed into the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions. Those advances have fueled fears of a further destabilization of the Horn of Africa region. Getachew Reda, a spokesman for the TPLF, told AP news agency last week that his forces seek to control a major shipping lane that functions as a supply chain from Djibouti to Ethiopia. Reda said his group's activity was "not to spite the other parts of Ethiopia," saying the posture was just "part of the game" and noting that people in Tigray are starving. With violence now spilling out into larger areas, Prime Minister Abiy is imploring citizens to help join security forces "halt the destruction of the treasonous and terrorist TPLF organization and the machinations of foreign hands once and for all." Abiy's statement also called on Ethiopians to become the "eyes and ears of the country in order to track down and expose [Tigray] spies and agents." Some observers are concerned that people from he region may be targeted simply for their ethnicity, though the government stated, "The battle is not with Tigray but with the terrorist forces." In May, Abiy's government declared the TPLF a terrorist group. The United Nations (UN) estimates that recent fighting in Tigray has displaced some 170,000 people. Overall, it is thought that roughly 300,000 have been displaced since fighting first began, thousands have been killed during that time. The UN also declared that it was "extremely alarmed by the reported killing of over 200 people, including more than 100 children, in attacks on displaced families" in Afar. The statement was made by Henrietta Fore, who heads the UN children's relief agency UNICEF. TPLF spokesman Reda denied that his group had anything to do with the incident, instead shifting blame to government forces whom he says, "launched an offensive." Separately, UN refugee agency (UNHCR) spokesman Boris Cheshirkov told reporters in Geneva, Switzerland, that his agency had regained access to two refugee camps housing some 23,000 Eritreans in Tigray, but that their situation remained dire due to a "complex and fluid security situation." js/wmr (AFP, AP, Reuters) | 8Society
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Boris Johnson pledged to push through an open rebellion from his government officials on Wednesday, and "get on with governing the country" as members of his own party piled on pressure for him to step down as the UK's prime minister. "I am not going to step down and the last thing this country needs, frankly, is an election," he said. "I look at the the issues that this country faces, I look at the biggest war in Europe for 80 years," Johnson said while speaking to a parliamentary committee. "And I cannot, for the life of me, see how it is responsible just to walk away from that." Later on Wednesday, Johnson reportedly called on Housing Minister Michael Gove to resign. Gove was instrumental in orchestrating the 2016 Brexit referendum vote that ultimately saw Britain leave the European Union. "He sacked Michael Gove," Johnson's parliamentary private secretary James Duddridge told Sky News. "The prime minister is in buoyant mood and will fight on." Gove was the first Cabinet member to confront Johnson earlier Wednesday with the message that he must step down for the good of the Conservative party and country, according to multiple reports. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video British Security Minister Damian Hinds, Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis and Treasury Minister Helen Whately became the latest ministers to resign Thursday morning. The British prime minister previously faced interrogation from members of parliament after two of the most senior ministers in his Cabinet stepped down. More than 40 officials have stepped down in total. Finance Minister Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid both said they could no longer support the culture of scandal surrounding Johnson's tenure. The two ministers resigned after several days of shifting explanations from Johnson's Downing Street office about a sex scandal that involved a mid-ranking ally of Johnson. The prime minister is under fire over his promotion of junior minister Chris Pincher to the role of chief whip — a key position that involves enforcing party discipline. The promotion came despite Pincher being accused of drunkenly groping two men, and Johnson having been made aware of the allegations. The opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, who led the grilling at the weekly Prime Minister's Questions session, said anyone who remained a minister in Johnson's government was also tainted. He described those still loyal to Johnson as "a Z-list cast of nodding dogs," after a slew of scandals that have surrounded the prime minister and his government. "Anyone quitting now after defending all that hasn't got a shred of integrity... Isn't this the first recorded case of the sinking ships fleeing the rat?" "He's only in power because he's been propped up for months by a corrupted party defending the indefensible." Johnson confirmed that the issue of sexual misconduct had been raised when Pincher was a junior minister in the foreign office, and that he had been made aware of the allegations. "The matter was resolved. It's absolutely true that it was raised with me. I greatly regret that he [Pincher] continued in office and I've said that before." "It is now the subject of an independent investigation and that is the right thing," the prime minister added, before going on to defend his government's record. Speaking in the House of Parliament shortly afterward, former minister Javid — who has already resigned once before under Johnson as prime minister — said he felt compelled to resign, despite being "a team player." "Treading the tightrope between loyalty and integrity has become impossible in recent months… I will never risk losing my integrity. I also believe a team is as good as its team captain and that a captain is as good as his or her team. So loyalty must go both ways. The events of recent months have made it increasingly difficult to be in that team." Sunak, who did not speak, tweeted on Tuesday that "the public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously … I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning.'' Both ministers resigned minutes after Johnson appeared on television to apologize for appointing Pincher to the role despite knowing the allegations. Johnson is alleged to have joked about the claims, referring to the lawmaker as "Pincher by name, pincher by nature" in 2020. However, the prime minister's office had said at first that it was not aware of any complaints against Pincher, but later changed this to "specific complaints." Downing Street then said it was not aware of "serious specific allegations," and subsequently that it was not aware that the accusations had been substantiated. This account was refuted by the top civil servant in the UK Foreign Office from 2015 to 2020, who said the complaints about Pincher had been upheld. In a highly unusual move for a civil servant, Simon McDonald publicly claimed that Johnson's office had repeatedly failed to tell the truth. The revelations are only the latest in a string of scandals involving Johnson, who was been fined by police for lockdown-breaching parties. Last month, he survived a no-confidence vote that saw 41% of Conservative lawmakers vote to topple him. A string of other more junior ministers announced their resignations on Wednesday, citing the culture of scandal as the reason they were leaving their posts. Meanwhile, Conservative Party lawmakers Chris Skidmore and Tom Hunt submitted letters of no confidence in the prime minister, intensifying calls for his resignation. rc/msh (AFP, AP, Reuters) | 7Politics
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Bavaria's Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism (ZET) is taking over proceedings after a Bundeswehr soldier posted a video which contained "threats against the rule of law." The ZET on Monday confirmed that it was assuming the case as it recognized that "extremism" could not be ruled out, while it continued its investigations into the production of the video which was widely shared on social media. The soldier, who was briefly arrested at the end of December and has since been released, expressed his vehement opposition to a vaccine mandate for care workers and those in the Bundeswehr. The man is being investigated for possibly inciting the public to commit a crime. "A video of a supposed soldier, which has been shared here a lot, is currently circulating online," the German Defense Ministry wrote on Twitter last week. "It contains threats against the rule of law that are unacceptable. The consequences are already being examined." In the one-minute clip, the man appears to be dressed in a Bundeswehr uniform and gives what he claims to be his surname and rank. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video His message targets the vaccine mandate for both healthcare workers and soldiers. He then warns the German state that it has until "tomorrow at 4 p.m." to revoke these rules, without specifying which day he means or exactly what actions he will take. Numerous reports of far-right extremists within the German armed forces have emerged in recent years, leading to dismissals and even prosecutions. About 71% of people in Germany are fully vaccinated. The new German government has said it will consider introducing a full-scale obligation to be vaccinated in early 2022. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video jsi/rt (dpa, epd) | 3Crime
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Across China, war epic The Battle at Lake Changjin is filling cinemas and shattering box office records. The film, set on the Korean Peninsula during the bloody 1950-53 Korean War, is on course to be the world's highest grossing movie of 2021. But the movie has been met with fierce criticism in South Korea, raising the possibility that it may not even find a local distributor. To many South Koreans, the film is another propaganda piece filled with historical inaccuracies and bankrolled by the Chinese government to incite deeper patriotic feelings among the country's younger generation. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Some critics point out that the movie has been released to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. Others are angry that the Chinese people are being told the nation's "heroic" volunteers brought peace to the peninsula through their self-sacrifice, and insist Beijing is trying to rewrite history. "China is very powerful economically and they are becoming more aggressive toward their neighbors, and it appears they think that power gives them the right to alter history," said Han Ye-jung, a lawyer in the Seoul office of an international legal firm. "I think that [South] Korean people are angry and disappointed about this," she told DW. Han said she's not surprised about the latest movie, highlighting that another Chinese-made Korean War movie, The Sacrifice, was due to be released in South Korea in September. Instead, the movie was met with such fierce opposition from veterans and politicians that the local distributor canceled its release. In a statement, the Korean War Veterans Association described the release of The Sacrifice as "an act of contempt against war veterans and patriots who participated in the Korean War." "It is an anti-national act that goes against the system of liberal democracy to show to our young people today a propaganda film describing Chinese soldiers as heroes when they were actually part of a war that infiltrated our country," the association said. According to Han, The Battle at Lake Changjin is another example of propaganda. The movie depicts China holding off US troops against all odds in one of the pivotal battles of the Korean War. That the fighting broke out when North Korean troops invaded the South is rarely explained in China's accounts. North Korea started the three-year conflict by invading the South, then Beijing came to Pyongyang's assistance after UN forces had pushed the North Korean military virtually to the Chinese border, Han said. "If China had not helped the North and attacked the South, then the war would have been over much earlier and hundreds of thousands of people would not have died," she said. "Instead, the fighting went on until 1953, the damage to the South was terrible and we still live on a divided peninsula. "That is the reality of the Chinese attack on Korea, not what they are portraying in this movie," she said. The film tells the tale, from the Chinese perspective, of one of the bloodiest encounters of the entire conflict. In December 1950, six months after the initial North Korean attack had forced the South's troops back to the ever-shrinking perimeter around the southern city of Busan, the UN — led primarily by the US military — had advanced beyond the prewar border and was approaching the Chinese frontier. Some 30,000 US troops had advanced to Lake Changjin — known in the West as Chosin Reservoir — when they were suddenly confronted by eight divisions, or 150,000 fresh Chinese troops. The US managed to extricate the bulk of their troops by road to the port of Hungnam, from where they were evacuated. Nearly 18,000 US troops were killed, captured, wounded or listed as missing. On the Chinese side, there were more than 48,000 deaths. Many also lost their lives due to the terrible weather conditions. The film comes at a time when Beijing and Washington are at geopolitical, economic and military loggerheads. Chinese state-run newspaper Global Times has claimed the film has "pushed the patriotic sentiment of people across the country to a peak amid the tense China-US competition." It also reported that "many residents" in Shenyang in China's northeastern Liaoning province "spontaneously came to mourn the heroes by laying flowers" on the graves of men killed in the conflict. The Global Times cited a retired military officer as saying that he went to watch the film on the day of release, and that he would "dash forward like the old generation," "if the order is given." Rah Jong-yil, a former South Korean diplomat who was 10 years old when the war broke out, has slammed the film as propaganda "nonsense." "But it is troubling," Rah said. "The Chinese say they were fighting for North Korea and resist US aggression, but Beijing was acting in its own interests at the time and did not want to see Korea unified and supported by the US on their border. "They want to change the narrative of what happened before and during the war, which is dangerous as Chinese people have no way of knowing that it is propaganda," said Rah, who has vivid memories of battles raging close to the village from where he had been evacuated for safety. "We Koreans know that we were attacked and invaded by the North Koreans and then the Chinese," he said. "This is just whitewashing of the truth. But who can stop the Chinese government telling their people these things?" | 7Politics
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China's Foreign Ministry on Thursday issued a warning to four Western countries for their diplomatic boycotts of the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing. "The US, Australia, Britain and Canada's use of the Olympic platform for political manipulation is unpopular and self-isolating, and they will inevitably pay the price for their wrongdoing," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said. The remarks came a day after Australia, Britain and Canada joined the United States in barring their government officials from attending the Games, citing China's human rights violations. Asked about the chance of more countries joining the diplomatic boycott, Wang said: "I don't see any need to be worried about any domino effect." "On the contrary, most countries in the world have expressed support for the Beijing Winter Olympics," he added. French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Thursday that a common European stand regarding the diplomatic boycott of the Games was necessary. Le Drian's comment came shortly after French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer said Paris will not join the boycott. "Sports is a world in itself, which must be protected from political interference, otherwise [...] we can end up by killing the competition," Blanquer said on French broadcaster BFM TV. Nor does Germany's Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) approve of a diplomatic boycott. DOSB Vice-President Stephan Mayer told DW he was "not so sure" a diplomatic boycott "is the right way." Mayer said he does believe it "very important to use the Winter Olympics in Beijing in order to discuss certain issues like the rule of law, and especially the human rights issues, with the government of China." Amid reports that Germany has not yet officially registered a diplomatic delegation to send to the Games, Mayer said there is still time. "We have a new government now in Germany," Mayer told DW. "I think we certainly still have the chance to send a political or diplomatic delegation to the Winter Olympics." While the diplomatic boycott does not affect the athletes' ability to compete in the Games, International Olympic Committee (IOC) chief Thomas Bach warned that the politicization could threaten the future of the Olympics. "If we would start to take political sides on one way or the other we would never get all the 206 national Olympic committees to the Olympic Games," Bach said after an IOC Executive Committee meeting on Wednesday. Rights groups have called for a full boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, citing Chinese human rights abuses against its Uyghur minority in the northwest Xinjiang province, which some have called genocide. Human Rights Watch's China director Sophie Richardson said a boycott is a "crucial step toward challenging the Chinese government's crimes against humanity targeting Uyghurs and other Turkic communities." fb/sms (Reuters, AFP) | 9Sports
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The accusations keep cropping up when it comes to the debate around climate change: "China is the biggest destroyer of the planet," "China is the worst country in terms of pollution," "China is to blame." But what role does China actually play in climate change? Since 2008, China has topped the annual list of being the largest emitters of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2), according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that Oxford University contributes to. In 2019, China emitted 10.2 billion metric tons of CO2 — nearly twice as much as the United States (5.3 billion metric tons) — representing nearly 28% of global emissions. But net emissions alone are not enough to blame China for climate change. "If you look at only one number, you're only getting one side of the story," says Shyla Raghav, vice president of climate change at Conservation International, an environmental organization headquartered in the United States. To get more insight, it's worth looking at carbon dioxide emissions per capita. When combining 2019 data from the Global Carbon Project and Our World in Data, numerous states from the Caribbean and the Persian Gulf top the list. In 14th place is the US, with just over 16 tons of CO2 per capita. China emits less than half of that per capita, tallying 7.1 tons, putting the country in 48th place. In the case of carbon dioxide, it is important to know that from a human perspective, the gas can remain in the atmosphere for an extremely long time: The entire decomposition process takes several hundred thousand years, according to the federal German Environment Agency. Oceans and forests can absorb some of the gas quite quickly — but an estimated 40% of the CO2 emitted by humans since 1850 has remained in the atmosphere, according to the international study Global Carbon Budget. When examining what drives human-caused climate change, historical emissions must be considered. The data shows that although China is the second-largest emitter of carbon emissions as of 2019, it has emitted 220 billion metric tons of CO2 since 1750 — just over half as much as the US, which released 410 billion metric tons. Germany's historical emissions total 92 billion metric tons, putting it in fourth place behind Russia and ahead of the UK. Robbie Andrew, a senior researcher at the Center for International Climate Research (CICERO) in Norway, said China began producing significant amounts of CO2 much later when compared to its historical emissions. "China's emissions really weren't significant. They didn't start ramping up until about 2001 when China joined the World Trade Organization, and that gave it access to the world's markets and that drove their economic boom, particularly focused on producing goods for exports," said Andrew, who also participated in the Global Carbon Budget study. "There was already a problem before China came along. So, effectively, China did not create the problem." There is one other point that plays a role when considering the question of climate change responsibility. How many items do you own that bear the label "Made in China"? Items could include your smartphone, cutlery, a plastic chair or even your laptop. The greenhouse gases emitted during the product's manufacturing are tallied as China's — and not the country where you purchase and use it. Statistics on carbon emissions are usually recorded according to the producer principle, and not the consumer principle. One feature of globalization is that countries in the Global North, in particular, have outsourced their production operations. When you take that into account, the picture shifts. For example, under the consumer principle, the carbon footprint of the US in 2018 was around 6.3% higher than under the producer principle, while in Germany it was 14% more. Countries ranked highest under the consumer principle were Malta and Switzerland, with footprints 248% and 225% higher, respectively. China, on the other hand, is a CO2 exporter. If the statistics are adjusted for emissions for products that go abroad, Chinese CO2 balance drops by 10%. As CICERO researcher Andrew explains, this effect was even greater for China around 15 years ago. In the mid-2000s, export goods were responsible for about one-fifth of China's emissions. But Andrew expects further changes for China in the future. "This effect is going to continue to decline because the share of China's economy that's focused on exports is declining as a share of the total," he said. Earlier this year, three scientists from Dutch and German research institutes proposed introducing a concept whereby responsibility for CO2 emissions should be shared between consumers and producers according to economic benefit. Other factors relating to globalization should also be considered. International shipping and air traffic don't usually show up in statistics for individual countries, but rather are listed separately. This means transporting your laptop won't affect the CO2 budget of either China or your country. So when we talk about responsibility for climate change, the nation-state's impact can't be the only benchmark used: Transportation also has a significant share. In 2018, shipping was responsible for about 2.9% of human-caused CO2 emissions. The share of civil aviation was similar in 2019, at just over 2% (although this is somewhat higher considering atmospheric effects of flying). Conservation International's Shyla Raghav says focusing on a state-based measure of carbon emissions does have its weaknesses, but she also cautions: "What is the alternative?" That leaves the question: Are we focusing too much on CO2 as a greenhouse gas when it comes to responsibility for climate change? Experts do agree that carbon dioxide is the biggest contributor to the warming of our planet. "CO2 levels are a good guide to all emissions," Raghav said. Still, both Raghav and Andrew believe that other greenhouse gases should not be ignored when it comes to curbing climate change in the future. Methane, for example, plays an important role. The gas is produced in agricultural — a famous example includes belching cows — and methane is also released during fracking and oil production. "I would say that China is not exclusively to blame for climate change," concludes Raghav. But with China currently the world's largest carbon emitter, she adds, Beijing now plays a critical role when it comes to taking responsibility in the fight against warming. For CICERO researcher Robbie Andrew, the answer to responsibility for climate change cannot be based on statistics alone. "You have to ask the question: Could China have developed in any other way? And what would China look like now if, somehow, they had not used all of the coal they have access to? Is China to blame because it doesn't have a wealth of hydropower resources?" Andrew questioned. "The question of responsibility and blame is very complex," he concluded. After all, China has set itself the climate goal of being carbon neutral by 2060. This article is part of a series in which DW is debunking myths surrounding climate change.
Read also: Part 1 — Is global warming merely a natural cycle? Part 2 — Is half a degree of warming really such a big deal? Part 4 — Climate protection: Can I make a difference? Part 5 — Does climate protection stifle economic growth? This article was translated from German. | 6Nature and Environment
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A cargo aircraft crashed near Palaiochori Kavalas in northern Greece late Saturday, killing all eight people on board. The plane operated by Ukraine-based airline Meridian was traveling from Nis in Serbia and on to Bangladesh, via Jordan. The pilot had reportedly requested clearance to make an emergency landing at nearby Kavala airport due to an engine problem but did not manage to reach it. Communication with the plane ceased almost immediately afterward. The aircraft was already in flames before it crashed, people close to the crash site told local media. The mayor of the affected community of Pangeo, Filippos Anastasiadis, said that the plane had been carrying "dangerous material," likely ammunition.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The plane was an Antonov An-12 aircraft — a Soviet-built, four-engine turboprop aircraft — owned by a Ukrainian company. It was carrying mines and around 11 metric tons of weapons to Bangladesh, which had bought the arms. Serbia's defense minister, Nebojsa Stefanovic, said the cargo included illuminating mortar shells and training shells. It had taken off mid-evening local time from Nis. Stefanovic said the crew, who were Ukrainian, were all killed. The plane crashed on farmland close to two villages that are part of the Paggaio municipality. The fire service said in a statement that it has cordoned off the site. Local officials said 15 firefighters and seven fire engines were initially deployed to the area. Firefighters faced difficulty approaching the site because of the ongoing explosions, officials said. Nearby residents were told to keep their windows shut all night, not to leave their homes and to wear masks. Authorities said they did not know if there were dangerous chemicals — including those contained in batteries — on the plane. A specialist Greek military army unit that looks for nuclear, biological and chemical substances was expected to comb the site. sri,rc/wd (AFP, dpa, AP, Reuters) | 1Catastrophe
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China said on Saturday that it was conducting military exercises in the Taiwan Strait, after Beijing warned Washington of severe consequences if US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were to visit Taiwan during her upcoming tour of Asia. The ruling Communist Party's military wing, the People's Liberation Army, was conducting "live-fire exercises" near the Pingtan islands off Fujian province from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., the official Xinhua News Agency said. The Maritime Safety Administration warned ships to avoid the area. The announcement didn't reveal any information about whether the drills would involve just artillery or also missiles, fighter planes and other weapons. Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has pledged to "unify" it with the mainland — by force if necessary. Last week, Pelosi said it was "important for us to show support for Taiwan," during a speech in the US Congress. Washington has so far neither confirmed nor denied reports about Pelosi's visit. If she travels to Taiwan, she would be the highest-ranking US elected official to visit the self-governing democratic island since 1997. The US does not have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but maintains close unofficial relations with Taipei. Washington continues to sell military gear to Taiwan for self-defense, even though Beijing has repeatedly warned not to do so. US Navy warships also regularly sail through the Taiwan Strait to project American military power in the region. The US says its goal is to ensure peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. To this end, it wants to maintain the status quo. President Joe Biden has said the US would come to Taiwan's defense if China attacked. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video In a phone call on Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned Biden that "those who play with fire will eventually get burned," referring to US support for Taipei. Such rhetoric "is a warning for the Americans, but it should also be a warning for the Chinese government," Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, told DW. "By increasing that kind of rhetoric, they are putting themselves in a situation that when Pelosi visits Taiwan, the Chinese military may have to take some actions which will require the Americans to respond, and that puts it on an escalatory path that nobody wants. It's not in anyone's interests," he said. Tsang stressed a trip by Pelosi to Taiwan under the current circumstances would not be the best of ideas. "I think she should not have planned for this visit to begin with because it doesn't really add that much to Taiwan or US-Taiwan relations," Tsang said, adding: "But now that she has said that she was going to go or indicate that she would go and the Chinese government has come out blackmailing the United States, it becomes very difficult for the United States government to back off under Chinese pressure, because doing so will create a moral hazard. So she may well end up having to go." In recent months, China has been increasingly sending its fighters, bombers and surveillance aircraft near Taiwan, while also dispatching warships through the Taiwan Strait in a show of force. China and Taiwan have been separated since 1949, when the Chinese civil war ended with the victory of the Communists under the leadership of Mao Zedong. The governments in Beijing and Taipei say they are one country but disagree over which is entitled to national leadership. tg/sri (AFP, Reuters) | 2Conflicts
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A man with a knife killed two people and wounded seven more on a regional train running from Kiel to Hamburg on Wednesday. A suspect was arrested at a small train station in the town of Brokstedt soon after the crime. The state of Schleswig-Holstein's interior minister, Sabine Sütterlin-Waack, rushed to the scene soon after being informed of the news. Speaking to reporters in Brokstedt on Wednesday evening, she said that the suspect was a stateless man from the Palestinian territories. Reports on the young man's age varied slightly in the hours following the attack. But police said a 33-year-old suspect had been taken to hospital while under arrest to treat minor injuries. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Three of those wounded were seriously hurt, four suffered minor injuries. Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser wrote on Twitter: "All our thoughts are with the victims of this awful crime and their families." She said she had reached out to her regional colleague Sütterlin-Waack to offer support. "The background to this crime is now being investigated with high priority," Faeser said. "I offer heartfelt thanks to police and emergency services." Other national and regional politicians and local religious leaders also issued similar messages of condolence or distress. Police said the attack took place as the train was approaching Brokstedt, a small community of around 2,000 people north of Hamburg. A suspect was arrested when the train reached Brokstedt station. Multiple travelers had called the emergency services from the train. Police later said that three passengers had eventually managed to restrain the suspected attacker on board, and that police arrived at the scene with him under their control. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Roughly 70 passengers were aboard the train in total. Police took statements from them at a site nearby. The station was closed to allow emergency services and forensic teams to work on site. Rail providers reported disruptions in the area as a result. According to police, further details remained elusive around two hours after the attack. Neither suspected motives or reasons for the attacker's actions, nor the condition of those injured was entirely clear. Police said the suspect was not thought to have been on any extremist watch lists, based on preliminary checks. The dpa news agency also reported, but this time citing security sources speaking off the record, that the man was exhibiting signs of a pyschiatric illness. The region's interior minister, Süttlerin-Waack of the Christian Democrats, was informed of the crime while in the state parliament. She first consulted with state premier Daniel Günther. By early evening, she had arrived in Brokstedt. msh/nm (AFP, dpa) | 3Crime
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The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) says Belarus is cooperating with an investigation by its disciplinary board into Dmitry Baskov, the head of the Belarusian ice hockey federation. Baskov is accused of being personally involved in the death of Raman Bandarenka, an opposition activist who died from brain injuries in November last year after he was attacked by a masked gang – said by opposition groups to be members of Belarusian security services. Authorities in Belarus say Bandarenka was intoxicated when he got into a fight with a group of civilians. Last Thursday, the prosecutor general's office announced that it had opened a criminal case into the activist's death. Baskov has declined to comment on the matter. Although the IIHF began its own investigation into Baskov's alleged role in the attack in December, it has come under criticism from the athlete-led Belarusian Sport Solidarity Foundation (BSSF) for not making enough progress with the investigation, amid concerns it could be let go entirely. Responding to a query from DW, the IIHF said it couldn't set a timetable for when its investigation would be completed. However, it said it expected to receive evidence from the Belarusian prosecutor general, "to aid in this investigation." "Belarus has agreed to cooperate with the IIHF, and to evaluate all relevant witness statements, videos, and other evidence to support the [IIHF's own] investigation," the governing body said. "They have acknowledged the seriousness of these allegations and have pledged to obtain all facts possible." Asked why Baskov hadn't been suspended pending the outcome of the investigation, the IIHF said that its code of conduct only requires a provisional suspension in cases of alleged match-fixing. This is in contrast to the approach taken by the International Olympic Committee, which has temporarily excluded Baskov, a board member of Belarus's Olympic committee, from all Olympic activity "in view of the specific allegations raised against him." The IIHF has already had to contend with stripping the country of its hosting duties for this year's Ice Hockey World Championship. It had come under mounting pressure to do so from major sponsors, European politicians and opposition groups including the BSSF, over the violent crackdown on protests against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Having succeeded in that campaign, the BSSF now wants Baskov banned from ice hockey for life. As well as his alleged role in Bandarenka's death, Baskov – an ally of Lukashenko – is also accused of using his position in the sport for political means, such as dismissing critics and opponents from ice hockey clubs. Further criticism has come the IIHF's way after Baskov was photographed with its president, Rene Fasel, during the latter's controversial visit to Minsk last month, which preceded the decision to take the World Championship away from Belarus. The IIHF defended the picture, telling DW it was "not unusual" for Baskov to host Fasel given that he remains head of the federation. In a statement released last week, the BSSF said that Fasel's conduct had "caused a wide public outcry" and showed "disregard for ice hockey's reputation and fundamental sports values." Questioning whether the IIHF was "duly scrutinizing the case," the group wrote: "The BSSF believes that the IIHF will not undermine its authority as an ice hockey governing body and will conduct the investigation properly. A delay in taking a decision on Mr. Baskov's case may cause a new wave of outrage and resentment towards the IIHF's performance." | 9Sports
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The Taliban and Western diplomats launched high-level talks in Oslo on Monday, according to the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. The Taliban's delegation, led by acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan, met with envoys from the US, France, UK, Germany, the EU and Norway. It's the first talks that Western officials have held with the Taliban since the extremist group seized control of Afghanistan last August. Khan told reporters in Oslo on Monday that the meeting is "an achievement in itself" for the Taliban. "Norway providing us this opportunity is an achievement in itself because we shared the stage with the world," he said. "From these meetings we are sure of getting support for Afghanistan's humanitarian, health and education sectors." The Taliban are urging the US and other countries to unblock nearly $10 billion (€8.8 billion) in frozen Afghan assets. The group says these funds are needed to tackle the country's dire humanitarian crisis. "We are requesting them to unfreeze Afghan assets and not punish ordinary Afghans because of the political discourse," Taliban representative Shafiullah Azam said late Sunday. "Because of the starvation, because of the deadly winter, I think it's time for the international community to support Afghans, not punish them because of their political disputes." Western countries, meanwhile, are urging the Taliban to respect the rights of women and girls. Western powers are also pushing the group to share power with ethnic and religious minorities in the country. During the talks on Monday, the Taliban denied allegations that they arrested two Afghan women's rights activists, Norwegian media reported. The three-day discussions began on Sunday, with the Taliban meeting representatives from civil society. The Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August, as the US and other NATO countries attempted to pull out their military and diplomatic personnel from the country. wd/rs (AP, AFP) | 2Conflicts
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The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought security policy to the forefront in Germany. Foreign relations, both political and economic, are under scrutiny. There is an increasing focus on the country's relationship with Beijing, partly because of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's visit to China. Only 9% of Germans consider China a trustworthy partner, according to the latest Deutschlandtrend survey of voters in Germany, conducted by pollster Infratest-Dimap and released by public broadcaster ARD. Five years ago that figure was 36%, indicating that the German public's attitude toward China has cooled significantly in recent years. It also means the German population currently views China with a similar level of suspicion as Russia (10%). Meanwhile, fears that Russia could invade more European countries have decreased compared with when the war began, but it remains high at 61%. When it came to being classified by the respondents as a "global threat factor," however, Russia scores much worse – with 86%, versus 63% for China. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video What does that mean for the future of trade relations? After all, China has been Germany's most important trading partner for the past six years. The representatively selected 1,307 respondents in the "Deutschlandtrend" survey did not take a clear stance on this. Almost nine out of ten are calling on the German government to make their country less economically dependent on non-democratic countries in general. Also, only one in five people considered economic interests to be more important than a commitment to human rights when dealing with China. But there was no unity on the question of future economic cooperation with China: Half the respondents were in favor of reducing the scope of cooperation, while the other half favored continuing relations at the current level or even expanding them. In contrast, there is clear opposition to Chinese investments in infrastructure in Germany. Almost seven out of 10 respondents (69%) disapproved of the 24.9% stake taken by the Chinese state shipping company Cosco in one of the four container terminals in Hamburg's port, recently approved by the German government. Political party preferences played no role in this response, the pollsters say. The war in Ukraine continues to be the number one foreign policy issue in Germany. Of the warring parties, the Germans view Ukraine much more favorably than Russia. For example, almost one in two (47%) of respondents viewed Ukraine as a trustworthy partner for Germany – compared to only one in 10 for the Russian Federation. However, that difference has narrowed slightly compared with an earlier survey in March, which showed 63% trusting Ukraine and only 6% for Russia. There is still disagreement in the country – the last survey on this took place in August – regarding Germany's military and economic response to the Russian invasion. Four out of 10 respondents considered the current level of support in terms of weapons deliveries to Ukraine was appropriate. About one in five, on the other hand, thought it was not enough and 30% thought it was too much. Some 31% of respondents were satisfied with the extent of the economic sanctions imposed on Russia, while 37% thought they did not go far enough, and 23% said they were too far-reaching. These opinions have barely changed compared to October. It is a different story when it comes to the question of Germany's diplomatic efforts: More than half say they do not go far enough. That is 14 percentage points more than in June. The opposition conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) remains ahead in the polls with 28% of the potential vote – the same as the previous month. The Greens are currently on 19%, also unchanged from the previous survey. The Social Democrats (SPD), the party of Chancellor Scholz, have risen 2 percentage points to equal their coalition partners, the Greens. Slightly down in the polls are the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) with 14% and the third governing coalition partner, the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) with 6%. The struggling socialist Left party remains at 5%. | 7Politics
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Britain's Northern Ireland Minister Brandon Lewis urged its Westminster parliament Wednesday to back his government's plan to legislate a halt to prosecutions of former British soldiers and Northern Irish paramilitaries, which, he said, would apply "equally to all Troubles-related incidents.'' Those three decades of conflict, until a 1998 peace agreement, cost 3,600 lives as mainly Protestant supporters of Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK fought mainly Catholic advocates of a united Ireland. Parties in Northern Ireland have expressed considerable skepticism at the plans, while Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said on Wednesday that Lewis' statute-of-limitation plan amounted to a general amnesty that was wrong "for many, many reasons." "This is not a position that we take lightly," Lewis had told parliament after the collapse in recent weeks of three murder trials of former soldiers. At two of them former soldiers had been on trial over Catholic protesters killed in the "Bloody Sunday" massacre of 1972 and a youth killed in Londonderry that year. Prosecutors said that the soldiers' statements given to military police in 1972 but without access to lawyers had become inadmissible under modern standards. Lewis told parliament his statute of limitations bill would include an independent body tasked with uncovering and compiling information about Troubles-related deaths and injuries. It was the "only way to facilitate an effective information retrieval and provision process, and the best way to help Northern Ireland move further along the road to reconciliation," he said. But Sandra Peake, executive of WAVE, a trauma group representing victims, on Wednesday described Lewis' plan as a "perversion of the criminal justice system." Families were being told their loved ones' deaths "didn't matter," said Peake. "Some families have not had the processes they should have had and that is simply wrong," said Peake, despite minister Lewis vowing to engage with victims' families. British military veterans' commissioner for Northern Ireland Danny Kinahan said former soldiers "on the whole" did not want an amnesty. But society was not getting anywhere through the courts system, Kinahan also said. Conservative MP Johnny Mercer, who until April this year was minister for military veterans' issues in Boris Johnson's Cabinet before being sacked, also issued a statement saying there were "much better, much more professional ways of dealing with the legacy of Northern Ireland, but this was always the simple answer." In 2010, a public inquiry into the "Bloody Sunday" shootings concluded that in January 1972 British paratroopers lost control. None of the casualties had posed a threat of causing death or serious injury. Soldiers were first deployed in 1969 to keep the peace between Catholic nationalists and Protestant unionists but sectarian killings ensued. On Monday, unionists paraded in Belfast, marking the 1690 Battle of the Boyne, when Protestant King William of Orange defeated Catholic King James II. Those marches were tinged by Protestant groups' dissatisfaction with the special terms for Northern Ireland Boris Johnson's government agreed to as part of Brexit, which they see as a first step to prying Northern Ireland away from the UK and as a broken promise from the prime minister. ipj/msh (Reuters, AP, AFP) | 2Conflicts
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Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021, rising living costs and unemployment have left many people with barely enough money to buy food. However, the Taliban government has no solution for stopping the collapse of Afghanistan's economy. Instead, the Islamist militant group has decided to focus on setting up rules of conduct and dress codes for women based on a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. New, stricter, rules are announced almost every day. For example, since Sunday, women are only allowed to board an airplane in the company of a man. According to a letter sent by the Taliban to the airlines operating in Afghanistan, this applies to both domestic and international flights. However, the Associated Press reported Tuesday that woman have been traveling alone from Kabul airport, a sign that some of the Taliban's orders are being ignored. The Taliban are also set to reintroduce a dress code calling for women to wear burqas that fully cover their bodies. Since March 29, all female employees working in government authorities and ministries have been required to cover their bodies completely. This week, some rules for public life also became stricter. Visiting public parks, for instance, will soon be divided by gender. In the future, women will be granted access only three days a week and access to the parks will be limited to men on the remaining four days. There are also new rules for male employees working for authorities and ministries requiring them to grow a beard, wear traditional Afghan clothing and pray together. The Taliban also recently backtracked on a promise to allow girls to attend school. Secondary schools for girls will be opened once "appropriate dress codes" are agreed upon for students aged 12 and older, according to a statement issued last week by the Ministry for the "Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice." This ministry was set up in place of the Ministry of Women's Affairs after the Taliban took power in August. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video "The new restrictions were created by old and uncompromising Taliban leaders," Afghanistan expert Tariq Farhadi told DW. An advisor to former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Farhadi believes that the radical wing of the Taliban has prevailed in an internal power struggle. "For them, ideology is more important than the welfare of the citizens. They have no interest in the Taliban's rule being recognized by the world community," he said. In order to be recognized by the international community as a legitimate government, the Taliban would have to make certain changes, including accepting demands from Western donors, for example, on gender equality. The radical forces in the Taliban have indicated that they will not accept this. Afghanistan's economy has been in free fall following the Taliban takeover. The war-torn country has not been able to stand on its own two feet economically and has been highly dependent on payments from abroad in recent years. Western donors, however, turned off the money tap after the Taliban takeover. Humanitarian aid intended to reach the suffering population directly through international organizations continues to be provided, but not in sufficient quantities. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video More than half of the population is threatened by acute hunger. Out of a population of 38 million, 24 million are dependent on supplies of food, water, medicine and other humanitarian goods, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said last week after a visit to Afghanistan. In total, various aid organizations would need around $8 billion (€7.25 billion) to finance humanitarian work and social programs. Grandi had also spoken with representatives of the radical Islamic Taliban government in Afghanistan. A planned meeting between Taliban and US representatives last weekend in Doha was canceled by the US side due to the Taliban government's decision against opening schools to girls. The meeting was to discuss issues related to the humanitarian and economic crisis in Afghanistan. "The limited and informal exchanges between the international community and the Taliban may break down if the Taliban continue to increase pressure on society," Soraya Peykan, formerly a professor at Kabul University, told DW. Peykan said the Taliban had deliberately turned basic rights such as the right to education for girls into a bargaining chip in talks with the international community. "They want to use the granting of this right as leverage to gain a better position in negotiations," said Peykan. Edited by: Alex Berry | 8Society
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People have been pushing back the boundary of the sea for centuries. Whether by building dikes in the Netherlands or creating artificial islands with soil and debris in places such as Hong Kong and Dubai, it once seemed as if nothing could stand in the way of our expanding landmass. But, with rising sea levels and disastrous flooding becoming ever more common, some communities are beginning to consider the opposite approach to counter the effects of climate change: managed retreat. This could include moving from big cities. In Sydney, Australia, extreme torrential rain in July last year caused dams to overflow and rivers to break their banks, forcing more than 30,000 residents to evacuate. Areas north and south of the city were deluged with 1.5 meters (59 inches) of rain in 24 hours, which is close to the average rainfall for a year in coastal areas of the state of New South Wales, according to Australia's Bureau of Meteorology. After Sydney also flooded in April 2022, the premier of the state acknowledged that such extreme weather was "becoming more common," and it would be necessary to "respond to the changing environment." Managed retreat means permanently moving people and buildings away from vulnerable areas — either in a preventative way or, as is more often the case, after a disaster. That's been the case in New Orleans, ever since Hurricane Katrina devastated the low-lying city at the mouth of the Mississippi River in 2005. "Climate change is affecting people all over the world, and everyone is trying to figure out what to do about it," A.R. Siders, a disaster researcher at the University of Delaware, wrote in a June 2021 study. "One potential strategy, moving away from hazards, could be very effective, but it often gets overlooked." In New Orleans, some rebuilding projects have offered low- and middle-income families the chance to relocate to new homes on higher ground, as have buyout schemes in the surrounding state of Louisiana. Similar programs are in place nationwide: As of 2017, the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program run by disaster management agency FEMA had bought up more than 43,000 homes in flood-prone areas across the United States and its territories abroad. But it's not always so simple: The process can be complicated by government red tape and end up exacerbating social inequalities as long-established communities are displaced. "Managed retreat is not a low-regrets option, nor is it easily reversed," Miyuki Hino, then a Stanford University doctoral student, wrote for UK-based climate site Carbon Brief in March 2017. "There are social and psychological difficulties in moving people from their homes — particularly if it involves loss of cultural heritage or moving a family from their ancestral lands." Kiribati, an archipelago of 33 islands in the central Pacific just barely above sea level, is among the first countries in the world to be threatened by the rising ocean. Some of its islands are already uninhabitable. With the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicting a global average sea level rise of between 15 and 30 centimeters (6 to 12 inches) by 2050, Kiribati is running out of options. In 2014, the government bought land in Fiji so its citizens could relocate, though the government recently announced plans to use that land for farming to help feed its people, in cooperation with China. It's also working with Australia and New Zealand to develop programs that will give people the necessary skills to find jobs, should they be forced to migrate. Learning to live with climate change can also mean tearing down existing structures and using the land for the greater good. In the US state of New Jersey, the government has been buying private residences in areas deemed vulnerable to storms or flooding linked to climate change. It's turning that land into recreational and conservation areas that, as the state's Department of Environmental Protection puts it, "will serve as natural buffers against future storms and floods." The voluntary Blue Acres Program, first launched in the 1990s, was expanded after Superstorm Sandy devastated the area in 2012. The program has since demolished more than 700 homes in the floodplains of the Delaware, Passaic and Raritan rivers and their tributaries. "New Jersey is going to have a wetter, more flooded future, and making Blue Acres proactive is reflecting that reality," Shawn M. LaTourette, New Jersey's environmental protection commissioner, told NJ Spotlight News in October. "The question will be how many properties can the state buy, how much it will ultimately cost, and how many willing sellers there will be." The state of California is also considering allowing fallow agricultural land to flood to help with massive rainfall events like the mega flooding that left at least 20 dead, breached levees, destroyed homes and at least $1 billion (€918 million) in damage in January this year. People who live close to the sea aren't always willing to let their land be reclaimed by the encroaching waves. "Allowing water to come closer is a frightening concept for the average human being," Hans-Ulrich Rösner, who heads up the Wadden Sea office of the conservation group the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, told DW in December 2019. "You can only do it when people are convinced." That was the case at a site in the Humber Estuary in eastern England, west of Hull. An attempt by the UK Environment Agency to manage flooding along the confluence of two rivers river saw about 440 hectares (1,000 acres) of agricultural land transformed into a flood storage area by intentionally removing part of an existing embankment in 2006. The resulting floodplain, the Alkborough Flats, was one of the largest created in Europe at the time. It has reduced the risk of flooding by tidal estuary waters for about 600 properties and lessened the need for flood defenses upstream. The new wetland habitat has also attracted a variety of birds, insects, fish and vegetation. It's far from unique: The approach has also been successfully introduced in places such as the Netherlands, India and Thailand. In what is one of the most extreme examples of managed retreat, Indonesia is planning to move its capital from the overcrowded, rapidly sinking metropolis of Jakarta to a new site about 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) away. Parts of Jakarta, a coastal city home to more than 10 million people, are subsiding at a rate of up to 20 centimeters a year, caused in part by overextraction of groundwater; most of North Jakarta could be submerged by 2050 due to rising sea levels and regular flooding. But, even if the government finds a new home, the millions of Jakartans living in slums will most likely have to fend for themselves. Edited by: Tamsin Walker This article, originally published on 07/07/2022, was updated on 02/09/2023 to include information about the latest flooding in California. | 6Nature and Environment
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Protests against the construction of a port in southern India continued on Sunday, with more than 80 people, including police officers, being injured in clashes after villagers marched on a local police station. The clashes came after a number of protesters were arrested by police on the weekend while blocking access of construction vehicles to the Vizhinjam seaport, which is being built by the ports and logistics company of Gautam Adani, estimated by Forbes to be the world's third-richest man. The protests have gone on despite repeated orders by the top court of the state of Kerala to allow construction to start. Video footage showed hundreds of protesters from the largely Christian fishing community marching on the police station. They were led by Roman Catholic priests, with one Catholic representative in the state previously calling the project a manmade catastrophe. Police said the protesters "came with lethal weapons and barged into the station and held the police hostage, threatening that if people in custody were not released they would set the station on fire." Speaking for the protesters, Eugine H. Pereira, the vicar general of the archdiocese and one of the leaders of the protests, said police pelted the demonstrators with stones. Senior local police official M R Ajith Kumar told Reuters news agency 36 officers were wounded in the clashes. Joseph Johnson, another of the protest leaders, said at least 46 protesters were also hurt. The Adani Group did not immediately comment on the latest protests. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Construction of the $900 million ($862 million) port has been halted for more than three months amid the protest by villagers who see it as causing coastal erosion and depriving them of their livelihoods. The Adani Group sees the port, located on the southern tip of India, as vital in the competition with rivals in Dubai, Singapore and Sri Lanka. It has said the port complies with all laws, and refers to studies showing it is not linked to shoreline erosion. Its standpoint is backed by the state government of Kerala. The protests recall similar action taken by activists in Australia against Adani's Carmichael coal mine, which faced a backlash over carbon emissions and possible damage to the Great Barrier Reef. In the end, production targets at the mine were reduced, while the first coal shipment from the mine was delayed by six years. tj/kb (Reuters, KNA) | 7Politics
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"We will help the Ukrainian people get rid" of the absolutely anti-popular and anti-historic regime," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo, Egypt on July 24. As reported by Russia's TASS news agency, Lavrov added: "We sympathize with the Ukrainian people, who deserve a much better life." However, fewer than three months earlier, he had said something very different: that Moscow's goal was to protect the people in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Back then, he had maintained that the Kremlin was not seeking a change of power in Kyiv. DW has compiled a summary of how statements on Moscow's war aims in Ukraine, made by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and other Russian representatives, have shifted over the past five months. On July 20, Lavrov told the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti and the Russian broadcaster RT that Moscow was continuing to pursue its objective of "denazification, demilitarization in the sense that there are no threats to our security or military threats from the territory of Ukraine." This time, though, he added: "Now the geography is different; it's far from being just the DPR and LPR [the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics], it's also Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions and a number of other territories." Lavrov did not rule out expanding Russia's "geographical objectives" in the war against Ukraine beyond the so-called People's Republics, adding that it made no sense to negotiate with Ukraine "in the current situation." These comments provoked very strong reactions in the Ukrainian media, which speculated that Russia could be "preparing the ground for the annexation of southern Ukraine." Just three months before his July 24 statement in Cairo, Lavrov was still maintaining that Russia was absolutely not trying to overthrow the President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's government in Kyiv. "We are not demanding that he surrender," Lavrov told Italian broadcaster Mediaset on May 1. "We are demanding that he give the order to release all civilians and to stop resisting. Our goal does not include regime change in Ukraine. This is the specialty of the US. They do it all over the world," he said. In the same interview, which was the first that he had given to European TV journalists since the war began, he said that Russia's true objective was to "ensure the safety of people in eastern Ukraine, so that they won't be threatened by militarization and Nazification and that no threats against the Russian Federation emanate from Ukrainian territory." Later, on May 31, at a meeting with Hissein Ibrahim Taha, the secretary general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Lavrov expressed the view that "Western colleagues" were exploiting the situation in Ukraine to prevent the "emergence of a multipolar world." Immediately after the start of the war, it was the alleged threat to Russia from the West — and NATO in particular — that was the main focus of the speeches of Russian politicians. They kept reiterating that Ukraine must be neutral, as that was the only way to prevent it from joining NATO. Vladimir Putin also emphasized this at a meeting with representatives of Russian airlines on March 5. He added that, were there to be a conflict between Russia and NATO, everyone was aware of what the consequences would be. A few days earlier, on March 1 — a week after the start of the invasion — Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency: "The main thing for us is to protect the Russian Federation from the military threat posed by Western countries, who are trying to use the Ukrainian people in the fight against our country." But toward the end of March, after the failure of the Russian offensive against the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, there was a marked shift in Moscow's rhetoric. "Denazification and demilitarization" receded into the background; support for the Donbas, and conflict resolution through negotiation took precedence. On March 25, for example, the deputy head of the General Staff of the Russian Forces, Colonel General Sergei Rudskoi, stated at a briefing that the "main goal [of the Russian special operation] is to provide assistance to the people of the DNR and LNR, who have been subjected to genocide by the Kiev [Kyiv] regime for eight years." to provide assistance to "the complete regime for eight years." In April, however, Russian officials again switched their focus to confrontation with NATO and the United States. On April 11, Sergey Lavrov told the Russian state broadcaster Rossiya 24: "Our special military operation is designed to put an end to the reckless expansion and reckless course toward total dominance of the United States — and the other Western countries under it — in the international arena." The West, he said, had turned Ukraine into "a springboard for the final suppression and subordination of Russia" — and he stressed that Russia would never accept a position subordinate to the West. Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, has also spoken of preventing Ukraine from becoming a member of NATO. On June 29, he told the Russian newspaper Argumenty i Fakty that this would be more dangerous for Russia than Sweden and Finland joining the alliance. In the same interview, he insisted that Crimea would be a part of Russia, forever. "Any attempt to encroach on Crimea is a declaration of war against our country," he warned. "And if this is done by a NATO member-state, this means conflict with the entire North Atlantic alliance; a World War Three. A complete catastrophe." Vladimir Putin had said the same in March, at his meeting with airline representatives. The supposed threat to Russia from further eastward NATO expansion to the east was already a key theme of Putin's televised address of February 24 announcing the Russian invasion, which he described as a "special military operation." He said that "the purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev [Kyiv] regime." This, he continued, was why Russia was "committed to the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine," pledging to "bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation." Putin also declared: "It is not our plan to occupy Ukrainian territory. We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force." This article was originally written in Russian. | 2Conflicts
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On Tuesday, Health Minister Adam Niedzielski told viewers of TVN24 that Poland's pandemic death toll was now more than 100,000 people. But Krzysztof J. Filipiak, the deputy rector of the private Medical University of Warsaw, told the website onet.pl that the number of deaths is far higher. Filipiak said more than 200,000 people had died during the pandemic in Poland. "Half of those are confirmed cases of COVID-19," he said. "The other half are either unconfirmed cases or collateral — deaths that can be traced back to the paralysis of the health service, the failure to treat other illnesses, the deterioration of health care and the collapse of the health system." Filipiak said Poland had the worst-funded health care system in the European Union and the fewest doctors per 1,000 inhabitants, at 2.4 — by comparison, the number is 4.2 in Germany. Many public health observers also blame the high COVID-19 death rate on the low vaccination rate in Poland. According to the government, fewer than 21.3 million Poles — about 55% of the population — are fully vaccinated. About 7.7 million people, or 18%, have received booster jabs. In Germany, 72% of people have received two doses and 43.5% have been triple-jabbed. Among the 27 EU member states, only Croatia, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria are behind Poland when it comes to vaccination. Many citizens are still refusing to get jabbed despite repeated appeals from the authorities and a host of celebrities. After record-breaking days with more than 650,000 vaccinations in June and an ensuing steep drop in the summer, rates began to rise again in autumn. Yet the number of vaccinations per day rarely exceeds 250,000. There is little pressure to get vaccinated in Poland. Though holiday markets were canceled across Europe in December, in Poland people flocked to marketplaces and crowded around mulled wine stands. The New Year's Eve party staged by the state-run TVP broadcasters brought 16,000 people out to celebrate. The government regularly publishes "information and recommendations" about limiting contact, but this guidance is rarely followed. Restaurants, bars and cinemas are only allowed to fill 30% of seats, but vaccinated people are exempt from limits, according to the government website, and eateries, hotels and fitness clubs do not require documentation. A simple "yes" suffices when customers are asked if they have been jabbed. That partly has to do with the fact that the legality of asking about vaccination status remains in question. The bigger the city, the more likely people are to heed pandemic measures. But, in Baltic Sea resorts or in the mountains of southern Poland, you see packed bars where no one seems to be interested in vaccination, vaccine passports or face masks. You are often subject to ridicule if you enter a store in eastern regions of the country wearing a mask. Many people openly question the existence of the pandemic. Deputy Health Minister Waldemar Kraska recently said Poles had developed a genetic resistance to regulations over the centuries. In November, he told the private radio broadcaster RMF that that was why the government had not introduced a shutdown. "If we don't enforce the existing restrictions," he said, "it won't help if we introduce additional ones." As the infection numbers rapidly rise, legislators for the nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) may be forced to take concrete measures to slow the spread. Draft legislation introduced in November and currently being debated would give employers the right to check the vaccine status of staff. Lawmakers from across the right-wing spectrum — including from within the PiS, a party in which anti-vaccine sentiment is rife — have expressed their opposition to the bill. More than 60 associations, most of them opposed to vaccination, were invited to a January 5 meeting of the legislature's health committee meeting. Critical media referred to the gathering sarcastically as a "festival" of opponents of pandemic measures. At the end of December, President Andrzej Duda told the Polish Press Agency that people had to "understand that those who did not wish to be vaccinated had their fears and doubts." When asked whether he would sign the vaccine bill into law should it pass parliament, Duda said: "That will be a very difficult decision." This article was originally written in German. | 7Politics
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Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven announced his resignation on Monday, giving the country's parliament speaker the job of finding a new premier. Lofven's decision to step down comes just a week after he became the first Swedish leader ever to lose a no-confidence vote among lawmakers. The vote was called after a left-wing party withdrew its support for Lofven's minority government due to a clash over proposed reforms to Sweden's rental market. Following the lack of support among his peers, Lofven could have either called a snap election or resigned. But in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Lofven told a news conference a snap election was "not what is best for Sweden." "The speaker will now begin work on proposing a prime minister who can be tolerated by the Riksdag [assembly]. The government will continue to govern the country for now, but as the caretaking government.'' Parliament speaker Andreas Norlen will have up to four attempts to find a new prime minister. It is up to him to start talks with party leaders who are able to form a new government. A former union boss and welder, Lofven had headed a fragile minority coalition with the Greens since 2018, relying on support from two small center-right parties and the Left Party in order to form a government — which was four months in the making. Last week's motion of no confidence had triggered frenzied talks across the political spectrum as both blocs tried to line up enough support to form a government. But with the center-left and center-right blocs evenly balanced in the polls, a general election, the next of which is scheduled for September 2022, might find Sweden in a political stalemate once more. jsi/rt (Reuters, dpa, AP, AFP) | 7Politics
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A tornado hit the small historic fishing town of Zierikzee in the Netherlands on Monday, blowing the roofs off several houses and causing several casualties. At least one person died and 10 others were injured as the whirlwind left a trail of damage in several streets, according to the Zeeland province safety authority. Emergency services were still assessing the extent of the damage, it said in a statement. Video posted on social media showed a waterspout close to the town. Zierikzee is located about 140 kilometers (87 miles) southwest of Amsterdam and has some 10,000 residents. According to Dutch public broadcaster NOS, the Netherlands experiences several tornadoes a year, but the last fatal one to hit the country was in 1992. The tornado came as a storm front was crossing the Netherlands from south to north, causing heavy rain in some parts of the country. tj/wd (AFP, AP) | 8Society
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A new wave of COVID-19 infections across Africa and the inequitable distribution of vaccines have further highlighted the multifaceted inequalities both within the continent and across the globe. While in some parts of the world, the challenge is overcoming vaccine hesitancy, in others the problem is getting the vaccines to the needy, Nicholas Crisp, the deputy-director general of South Africa's national Department of Health, told DW. "We should be over 250,000 [vaccinations] a day. We have the vaccine," Crisp said. "We have the capability of vaccinating, mass vaccination sites, private vaccination in pharmacies and other sites, public clinics that are vaccinating, but they are all reporting that they are not full and they could be seeing a lot more people," Crisp said. In Kenya, however, the rapid spread of the highly infectious delta variant coupled with a lack of adequate vaccines for those willing to receive the jab is a woeful story. Monica Wanjiku, a Kenyan who in three weeks lost three family members to the virus, told DW that she was devastated: "My heart is in a lot of pain. I don't know what to say, but if they had been vaccinated, I think even those who were sick could have healed." While statistics show that South Africa has vaccinated about 10 million (16.67%), of its 60 million people, in Kenya, only just over 2 million (3.5%) of the 52.5 million population have received the jab. South African officials say they have devised strategies to encourage more people to get vaccinated. "We have a lot of vaccination sites. Unfortunately, there are not enough people arriving at those sites. We are doing door-to-door work. We are going to various communities. My message to all of them is that vaccines do save lives," David Makhura, premier of South Africa's Gauteng province, told DW. The efficacy of vaccines against COVID-19 is something that many in Kenya, such as Wanjiku, will be happy to attest to. Her nephew James Mwangi also lost his father and uncle to COVID. "We are traumatized because it's not so easy. Some people you were with two weeks ago, they had no issue — then all of a sudden, in a span of less than 10 days, they are all gone." For countries with enough vaccines, such as South Africa, the challenge remains the rising tide of vaccine hesitancy. Fueled largely by misinformation and growing anti-vaccine campaigns on social media, some South Africans have decided against taking the vaccine. "Why do I need a vaccine when there are natural remedies that can heal us? And also, I have seen the after-effects of these vaccines. Some of their hands and shoulders get swollen. Some of them even get sick," one resident of Johannesburg told DW. Good information should counter such ignorance about the vaccine, Linda-Gail Bekker, a professor of medicine at the University of Cape Town, told DW. "This is a legitimate and very effective way to prevent severe disease and death," she said. Besides the problem of vaccine hesitancy, the biggest challenge facing African countries such as Kenya is the lack of vaccines to meet the needs of their population. While many rich nations have inoculated more than half of their populations, with plans for booster jabs underway in some, developing countries are seriously lagging, said James Nduati, a member of the Kenyan parliament. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video "We put in money to buy vaccines, but one of the challenges with the vaccines is that they are not available anywhere. So, globally, African citizens have been treated as second-class citizens," Nduati said. Samuel Obiero, a Nairobi resident, shares a similar sentiment. "They have protected their people and their citizens, but they have neglected these needy countries like Africa," said Obiero. Even health experts such as Lolem Ngong, of the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) in Kenya, feel that the inequity in vaccine distribution is morally unacceptable. "We cannot start administering booster shots when some of us don't even know if we will be able to get a second shot. It's such a really great injustice, and, unfortunately, the World Health Organization's (WHO) hands are also tied," stressed Ngong. Like many Africans, Faith Chebet, a Nairobi resident, believes that both the WHO and the rich countries need to help the poorer ones struggling to get enough doses. "They have an obligation to help, since we all need the vaccines," Chebet told DW. For a country such as South Africa, with more than 2.6 million people infected and 77,000 deaths so far, the argument is that at least 40 million people need to get inoculated to reach herd immunity. For Kenya other low-income countries, the future seems challenging. They face a race against time as they battle between the two extremes of a highly infectious delta variant and the lack of vaccines. Felix Maringa and Thuso Khumalo contributed to this article. | 5Health
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The African Union suspended the membership of the west African country of Mali late on Tuesday, days after the military detained the interim prime minister and president and took control. The AU, following in the footsteps of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), also threatened Mali with sanctions if power is not returned to the civilian transitional government. According to a decision by the Peace and Security Council, laid out in a statement published on Tuesday evening, the Republic of Mali is immediately barred from participating in African Union activities. The statement from the union said that it was "deeply concerned about the evolving situation in Mali and its negative impact on the gains made thus far in the transition process in the country." The members of the African Union backed the planned democratic transition, mediated by ECOWAS. The statement called for a return to the transition, the release of all political stakeholders, including the detained interim President Bah Ndaw and interim Prime Minister Moctar Ouane who are under house arrest, and for authorities to respect the 18 months transition period original stipulated in the agreement. Furthermore, the AU "strongly urges the Malian military to urgently and unconditionally return to the barracks, and to refrain from further interference in the political processes in Mali." The statement goes on to call "for the creation of conducive conditions for an unimpeded, transparent and swift return to the civilian-led transition, based on the agreed transition roadmap for Mali." If Mali fails to comply, the Peace and Security Council said it "will not hesitate to impose targeted sanctions and other punitive measures against any spoilers of the current transition." Colonel Goita sparked outrage last month after he had the transitional president and prime minister deposed and was subsequently named president by Mali's constitutional court. Goita had assumed the chair of interim vice president after leading a coup in August last year that removed President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. Mali was subjected to sanctions from neighboring western African countries in the wake of the coup. Following an agreement last October to lift sanctions imposed after the coup against Keita, the 15-member ECOWAS had said in a declaration that the vice president of the transition "cannot under any circumstances replace the president." The AU suspended Mali and imposed sanctions following the August coup, but reinstated its membership after the civilian-led transitional government was announced. The sanctions closed the borders for financial flows and commercial trade, but allowed basic necessities such as medicines and fuel to enter. Mali is one of the world's poorest countries. | 2Conflicts
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A US military investigation into the 2021 Kabul airport blast has concluded that the attack was carried out by a lone suicide bomber. In a briefing, the head of US Central Command, General Frank McKenzie, said that a so-called Islamic State militant carrying 20 pounds of explosives, detonated himself near one of the airport gates among dense crowds of people. The blast killed 170 Afghans and 13 US military personnel. Shortly after the attack it was initially reported that there had been two blasts along with accounts of gunfire. However the investigation has revealed that it was a single blast, and the gunfire was a result of warning shots that were fired by US and British troops shortly after the blast took place. "A single, explosive device killed at least 170 Afghan civilians and 13 US service members by explosively directing ball bearings through a packed crowd and into our men and women at Abbey gate,'' said McKenzie. Thousands of men, women and children, had descended on the area in a desperate attempt to get onto evacuation flights leaving the country. The Taliban had just seized control of the capital and many were fearing retribution from the country's new leaders. According to the lead investigator, the attack could not have been stopped. "Based upon our investigation, at the tactical level this was not preventable," said Brigadier General Lance Curtis. McKenzie also pointed out that despite the protective equipment of troops in the area, "the disturbing lethality of this device was confirmed by the 58 US service members who were killed and wounded despite the universal wear of body armor and helmets," which he said did stop impact from ball bearings, but body parts not covered resulted in "catastrophic injuries." The multinational airlift operation saw around 126,000 people evacuated over the course of around three weeks. Testimony was gathered from over 100 witnesses, including medical and explosives experts. Footage from drones and other sources was scrutinized to determine the course of events. kb/aw (AFP, AP, Reuters) | 2Conflicts
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It's rare that the visit of a head of state has a whole region holding its breath. However, the two-day trip by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Saudi Arabia has the potential to not only revive ties between the two countries but could be a game changer for the entire region. Following a first meeting with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi state news agency SPA reported on Friday, that both sides had discussed ways to expand cooperation "in all areas." Bilateral relations between Turkey and Saudi Arabia had been on ice since the killing of US-Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Although Erdogan never directly accused Mohammed bin Salman, he had said the killing had been ordered by "the highest levels of the Saudi government." Saudi Arabia denies these accusations. In the aftermath of the killing, Turkish authorities released audio files of the murder and bilateral relations between Turkey and Saudi Arabia took another blow. The US and other western countries also distanced themselves from the oil-rich country. But gradually, ties between Riyadh and the international community appear to have been mended, most recently as a consequence of the war in Ukraine where Saudi oil is needed more than ever. Ahead of Erdogan's visit, Ankara has done a lot to improve ties with the fellow Sunni Muslim powerhouse. For one, it toned down its criticism over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. In turn, Saudi Arabia's imports from Turkey rose by 2.8 % in the first two months of 2022. In the previous year, imports from Turkey had plummeted by 62.3% to 3.32 billion riyals ($886 million, €844 million). As a next step of reconciliation, Turkey in April moved the trial against 26 Saudi suspects in connection to the Khashoggi case from Ankara to Riyadh, despite widespread criticism by rights groups and Khashoggi's fiancee Hatice Cengiz.
"For Turkey, a rapprochement with Saudi Arabia has been important for a long time, above all for economic reasons. The political and the economic situation in Turkey is tense. Saudi Arabia is an important market, on the one hand as a buyer of Turkish products, but also as a potential investor," Sebastian Sons, an expert with the Germany-based CARPO think tank, told DW. However, there is also much at stake for Saudi Arabia. "The visit is especially important for the reputation of Mohammed bin Salman. The Saudis hope for a revaluation of MBS as a person, and consider the trip as a penitential course of Turkey." Sons thinks that for Riyadh the trip is perceived as boosting "the Saudi leadership role and the personal leadership role of MBS in the region." This view is echoed by Hani Naqshbandi, a political analyst and Saudi journalist: "This visit is not a normal trip of a head of state but more of a symbolic gesture that will be followed by a rise of trade volume, tourism and economic relations." In addition to that, he also sees "a corresponding desire for reconciliation in the region as a whole." Professor Samir Salha, who specializes in Turkish and regional issues at Turkey's Kojali University, told DW that Ankara has also been pushing for better ties with the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Qatar and Egypt. A trip by Erdogan to the United Arab Emirates in February this year resulted in a $4.9 billion (€4.6 billion) currency swap to help stabilize the Turkish lira, as well as the plan for setting up a $10 million fund for investments in the Turkish economy. In March, Ankara warmly welcomed Israeli president Isaac Herzog and Turkey also maintains good relations with Qatar. Ties with Egypt are also going strong and are in fact thought to have played an important role in the rapprochement between Turkey and Saudi Arabia. "We therefore have a kind of triangular cooperation in terms of economic partnerships, but also with regard to security interests vis-a-vis Iran," Sons told DW. As Saudi Arabia remains locked in a proxy war with Iran in Yemen, Riyadh might be hoping that Turkey's long-standing relations with Tehran could be crucial to ending that war . "On the one hand, Iran must be approached tactically in order to find a possible solution with the Houthis in Yemen. On the other hand, Iran continues to serve as a common enemy," Sons explained. He thinks that an "anti-Iranian axis together with Turkey, Israel and Egypt is part of Mohammed bin Salman's foreign policy strategy to bring himself and Saudi Arabia back into a leading role in the region," Sons told DW. Given that Turkey and Saudi Arabia are both Sunni while Iran is Shia, closer bilateral relations are seen by some as pointing to a new regional Sunni alliance. Analyst Naqshbandi however thinks it won't be Sunni Islam that'll be the basis for new alliances in the region, but that rather the "settling political differences." The ties between Ankara and Riyadh "will continue to be tactical in nature," Sons agrees. "The distrust on both sides, especially on the Saudi side, remains very high." Edited by: Andreas Illmer To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video | 7Politics
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Suddenly, things are moving very quickly: Russian troops are now occupying part of the second-largest country in Europe. This time it's with official insignia on their lapels and not undercover, as they have for the past eight years, or like the anonymous "little green men" in Crimea. No — Vladimir Putin is sending official troops as occupiers into an independent European state that is also a member of the United Nations: Ukraine. This is another breach of international law, like so many before it. It is a breach of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, which resulted in Ukraine voluntarily surrendering its nuclear weapons. In return, signatories Russia, Britain, and the United States pledged to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and existing borders. The fact that Russian troops now marching into Ukraine breaks this agreement should be a wake-up call for the widespread view, especially in Germany, that Putin does not mean what he says. Yet somehow, he does mean it! Civil rights activists from the former GDR understand the unspoken intention very well: It is a declaration of war. On Monday, Vladimir Putin — casually wearing a crooked tie and with both hands on the table — declared to his people and to Europe in all seriousness: "Ukraine for us is not just a neighboring country. It is an integral part of our own history, culture, and spiritual continuum." Spiritual continuum? For the uninitiated, the point is that "Kyivan Rus," to which today's nationalist Russia refers, finds its founding mythical origins in the Lavra, Kyiv's monastery of the caves. In this televised speech, the man in the Kremlin fully dropped the mask. Nothing remains of the time when Vladimir Putin inspired the members of the German Bundestag; when there was hope that something could come of a new, modern Russia. On this evening, Vladimir Putin was sitting in the Kremlin under his true nature: as a Chekist — a child of his organization, the KGB. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video There sits the soon-to-be 70-year-old ex-agent, once stationed in Dresden, at a dark brown desk, raising his hands to make air quotes with his fingers: "Grateful descendants," he says, "have torn down Lenin's monuments in Ukraine. This is what they call decommunization." It's important to know that in Ukraine, Ukrainian nationalists as well as civil rights activists and artists used the term "decommunization" to describe their path "to Europe" after the pro-European Maidan Revolution in 2014. In part through critical engagement with the process of iconoclasm. In Kyiv and in many other cities in Ukraine, the same happened as in the cities of the GDR after the fall of the Berlin Wall: the Leninist monuments were torn down — as a sign of departure. This was followed by a critical confrontation with this process. A process of an open society lived then in a post-Soviet country, Ukraine. This displeases the Chekist in the Kremlin, the man who shaped the Russia of the Yeltsin years into an economic structure of the KGB oligarchy based on oil and gas. From Putin's simple worldview, it's understandable: This man has no interest in any European understanding of the ambiguities of politics, culture and social reflection. With the Orange Revolution of 2004, Ukraine embarked on a path marked by setbacks. In 2013, protests began on the Kyiv Maidan in response to the Kremlin-friendly Yanukovych government's rejection of the European Union Association Agreement. Yanukovych was the second post-Soviet ruler whom Ukrainians have chased out. And they will do it again; because they know it can be done. Europe now has the opportunity: Put a stop to Putin's crimes, or be complicit in a major war that is still avoidable. Any solution that now allows Putin to take over the rebel regions of Donetsk and Luhansk carries the seeds of actual war against Ukraine, and is therefore not a solution. Germany, as part of the European Union, bears the greatest responsibility in this regard: after all it was German soldiers who, on Hitler's orders, first invaded Poland, then Ukraine and Belarus. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video This opinion piece was originally written in German. Edited by Richard Connor | 2Conflicts
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To many political observers in the United States and some eastern European countries, cracks seem to have appeared in Germany's image as a reliable ally. A wave of criticism is pouring over Berlin — occasionally mixed with bitter mockery — especially after Germany responded to Kyiv's request for weapons deliveries by promising to provide 5,000 protective helmets. Then maps were published showing the flight path of British transport planes carrying weapons to Ukraine, which obviously had to steer clear of German airspace. In dealing with its first major foreign policy crisis, the new German coalition government finds itself also facing an image crisis. The head of the Warsaw office of the think tank European Council on Foreign Relations, Piotr Buras, for example told the national daily taz he was "baffled" at the chaotic communication in Berlin: "The German government has not been speaking with one voice. We have heard many opinions, but see no clear strategy." International newspapers, from the The New York Times to the Deccan Herald in Bangalore, India, have run headlines asking: Where does Germany stand on the Ukraine conflict? To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Spain has dispatched a frigate to the Black Sea, Denmark is deploying fighter jets to Lithuania and a frigate to the eastern Baltic Sea, the US is putting its troops on standby — all this stands in contrast to Germany's refusal to supply weapons to Ukraine. Germany has so far refused to allow Estonia to send nine howitzers from Germany to Ukraine. Berlin justifies this with its policy restrictions for arms exports to crisis regions. Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, deputy chairperson of the neoliberal Free Democrat parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, believes such exports would not make a difference: "We have a situation in which the Ukrainian armed forces are militarily inferior to the Russian armed forces by a factor that could never be made up by arms deliveries," he told DW. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Critics point to Germany's economic interests and dependence on Russian energy supplies. Russia accounts for more than 40% of the crude oil and 56% of the natural gas imported by Germany. This amount could be increased by the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which was completed last summer but has not yet been put into operation. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has only recently made clear that in the event of a Russian military intervention, the pipeline would not get the go-ahead. The center-left Social Democrats who lead the new coalition government in Berlin tend to stress the need for negotiation and deescalation in relations with Russia. Its coalition partners, the Greens and the Free Democrates, both favor a tougher stand. But even among the Social Democrats, a veritable cacophony can be heard over the past few days. On Monday, party officials, lawmakers and government members finally worked out a common position: In the event of an invasion, all options for tough sanctions would be on the table (including considerations around Nord Stream 2). Meanwhile, all diplomatic channels should be explored, especially in the so-called Normandy format together with France; and the ban on arms deliveries to Ukraine will remain in place. On the last point, the Social Democrats are in line with the majority of German citizens. According to a new survey by the YouGov polling institute, 59% of respondents support the German government's position not to send weapons to Ukraine. Only 20% were in favor of arms deliveries. Germany is, after all, one of the largest donor countries to Ukraine in terms of economic and humanitarian aid. International observers have pointed out that longtime Chancellor Angela Merkel's departure from the political arena has substantially weakened European Russia policy and left a hole that Chancellor Olaf Scholz has apparently not yet been able to fill. British magazine The Economist, for example, pointed out that the channel of communication between Berlin and Moscow has dried up since the change of government in early December. "Chancellor Merkel's advantage was that she could call Putin at any time and bring about a conversation," former security adviser Horst Teltschik confirmed to DW. Scholz has reportedly contacted the Kremlin only once, so far — at the end of December. This article was originally written in German. While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing. | 7Politics
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A French court found eight suspects in the 2016 truck rampage in Southern France's Nice were guilty of crimes connected to the rampage, in which 86 people died. The driver was shot dead by police on the scene after causing chaos and devastation on Nice's seaside promenade. The attack occurred on the 14th July, which is celebrated as Bastille Day in France, with crowds gathering on the boulevard to commemorate. The main defendant, a friend of the driver, was found guilty of belonging to a terrorist organization and was handed an 18-year prison sentence. Two other defendants were found guilty of assisting the driver in obtaining weapons and the truck used for the attack. They were handed jail sentences of 18 and 12 years respectively. The other five suspects were handed sentences ranging from two to eight years. In total, seven men and one woman were sentenced. The verdict can be appealed. Survivors criticized that the defendants were not accused of partaking in the attack or of direct complicity. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Three of the defendants were charged with membership of a terrorist group, the other five with common law offenses such as defying gun laws. The Islamic State claimed responsibility a few days after the attack, but no evidence was found of the attacker having been in contact with the group. The court case on the November 2015 terror attacks in Paris came to an end earlier this year. All 20 defendants were convicted for their roles in the attack in 2015. Both court cases were recorded to be archived as two of France's historical verdicts. los/msh (AFP, dpa, Reuters) | 3Crime
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Publisher Benedikt Taschen was born in Cologne on February 10, 1961. At the age of 18, he founded a comic book publishing company in his hometown and soon began sending copies around the world. Shortly thereafter, he switched to the art book business and, in 1984, he had his first major success. With the money he had scraped together from his aunt and parents, he bought 40,000 copies of an illustrated book by the Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte at a trade fair in the US for $1 each. Within a short time, he had sold all the volumes at a significant profit, 9.99 deutsche marks (equivalent to about €5 or $6 today). To Taschen, it proved that there was a market for high-quality, yet affordable, illustrated art books. "At the time, we had bought remaining book stock from all over the world that others couldn't sell at regular prices. René Magritte was a great hero of mine," Benedikt Taschen recalled in a previous interview with DW. Taschen's first successful in-house production, Picasso — The Genius of the Century, was published in 1985. The first volume of what the publishing house called the "Basic Art" series was translated into 25 languages. Salvador Dali and Vincent van Gogh picture books followed, selling for the low price of 9.99 deutsche marks, and quickly became hits. "In the beginning, we had tried to buy licenses from other publishers, but they didn't want to sell us anything, so we then had to start publishing ourselves, which was also much better. That way we could produce the books exactly as we saw fit," said Taschen. A publisher of extremes, Taschen is unafraid to feature pornography in the same way as pop art, the interiors of Parisian residential mansions or a collection of rare antique vases. "The fact that we have spanned this arc from small to large, from conservative to progressive, from high to low, is something we are proud of," the publisher said. The publishing company's offerings include volumes of the Luther Bible, as well as books about the fetish photographer Elmer Batters, who spent his life photographing only women's legs. This breadth, aimed at capturing a variety of interests, is the publishing house's unique selling point. Yet not all of the publisher's endeavors have been a success. One of Taschen's failures was the photo book Kölner Junggesellen ("Cologne Bachelors"), a who's who of marriage-minded boys in the western German city. But for the most part, his company saw success. Taschen's secret is keeping prices down with the help of a high initial print run of 50,000 to 100,000 copies and a low-cost layout. Nevertheless, the standard of the texts, topics, and the quality of the printing remains high. That success inspired many to imitate Taschen's strategy. "Since we are by far the most copied publisher and still are today, at a certain point, the competition became so strong worldwide that we said we can't go along with it. Our books are extremely cheap anyway, you can't make them cheaper than that. So we had the idea to go in a different direction, which is to produce the most exclusive books in the world," he said. As a result, Taschen decided to enter the luxury market by publishing some of the most expensive books the industry had ever seen. Twenty years ago, this success came with SUMO, a book of photographs by German photographer Helmut Newton that was more than 400 pages and one meter (3.2 feet) tall. Weighing 30 kilograms (66 pounds), the publication was priced at €3,000 ($3,600). The volumes quickly sold out, with collectors demanding many times the asking price. The company further developed that unique approach with GOAT: A Tribute To Muhammad Ali, weighing in at 35 kilograms. The book no longer fit on a shelf, and was delivered on a designer table by Philippe Starck, bringing the "coffee book table" concept to a literal extreme. Yet despite this success, Taschen's best business doesn't come from these unique publications. "We're a typical backlist publisher, a publisher that lives off what it's done before, and most books can only work economically if they stay in the program for years." The books remain inexpensive only because they are sold in 100 countries, Taschen said. All publications are translated into at least three languages. The company also doesn't do small-scale orders — booksellers can only place orders in large quantities. Benedikt Taschen was also one of the first to conquer the global book market. In addition to Cologne, he has offices in Paris, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Madrid and London. "Basically the program is available worldwide," said Taschen, although "in certain Asian countries or the Middle East, art books by Gustav Klimt or Renoir can't be sold because of the censorship laws there," he added. Now based in Los Angeles, Taschen co-manages the publishing house with his eldest daughter Marlene. He's become a successful art collector and nurtures his interest in architecture. Years ago, he published a book about the architect John Lautner, who designed his unique home in the California hills, called the "Chemosphere." The octagonal building resembling a UFO is accessible via cable car and is an icon of modern architecture. Correction from January 10, 2021: This article previously stated that Benedikt Taschen was 12 years old when he started selling comic books. It was corrected, as he actually started at the age of 9. We apologize for the error. This article was translated from German by Sarah Hucal | 4Culture
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Tunisia's electoral board Wednesday confirmed the results of a referendum on Monday backing a new constitution giving President Kais Saied greater powers. Saied's rivals accused the electoral board of "fraud" in response to a referendum marred by low voter turnout. In the end, turnout hovered just above 30% with 94.6% of the vote in support of constitutional changes Shortly after a Sigma Conseil exit poll issued by state TV was released Monday showing 92.3% voting "yes," Tunisia's Electoral Commission confirmed the turnout was just 27.54% after opposition parties boycotted the ballot in protest. After the vote Monday, Saied told a crowd of supporters that his first move after the referendum would be to draft a new electoral law. He claimed the existing voting system did not reflect the will of voters. The president also promised "all those who have committed crimes against the country will be held accountable for their actions" but did not name names. "Tunisia has entered a new phase," he said. Critics feared the referendum could deal a major blow to democracy in the country that was the birthplace of the 2010-11 Arab Spring revolts. Polling opened at 6:00 am local time (0500 GMT) at around 11,000 voting sites across the North African nation, with polls expected to close at 10:00 pm. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The plebiscite comes exactly a year after a dramatic seizure of power that saw President Saied unseat the government and freeze the parliament as Tunisia battled a coronavirus surge amid political and economic crises. Monday's ballot was seen as a vote on Saied's popularity. Nearly 9.3 million out of Tunisia's 12 million population — of civilians aged above 18 — have opted in or been automatically registered to vote. The figures include about 356,000 voters registered overseas, for whom polling began on Saturday. Opposition parties and civil society groups have called for a boycott of the referendum and accused Saied of attempting to turn Tunisia into an autocracy — a decade after the country became the sole success story in pro-democracy uprisings across the region. Saied had been working on the new constitution for several months. A draft was published in the country's official gazette earlier in July. The proposed constitution hands the president the authority to name and sack the government without the approval of the parliament as well as appointing judges, among other powers. With the new text, the president could present draft laws to parliament, which would be obliged to give them priority. The charter would also place the head of state in supreme command of the army. Saied's draft would also make it nearly impossible to remove him from office before the end of his five-year tenure in 2024. If approved by the majority of cast votes, the draft constitution would replace a 2014 version that curtailed the president's powers in favor of parliament and the prime minister. The country's 2014 charter was a hard-won compromise between Islamist-leaning and secular forces, agreed on after three years of political upheaval. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video In Germany, Green Party parliamentarian and North Africa observer Tobias Bacherle told DW that the "problem is that there is a constitutional referendum taking place at all — considering Tunisia's current state." "There is absolutely no legal justification for Kais Saied's unilateral maneuvering," underscored Bacherle. "The constitutional referendum is clearly illegitimate. After dissolving parliament, Saied is now undertaking an undemocratic effort to rewrite the constitution according to his own will — and in doing so he is also ignoring the advice of the drafters' commission he himself appointed," he added. ar, zc,js,dvv/rs, jsi, (Reuters, AFP, dpa) | 7Politics
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Two UN human rights experts called on Sweden to scrap plans for an iron ore mine Thursday. The independent experts, Jose Francisco Cali Tzay, a special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples, and David Boyd, the special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, asked Sweden's government to withhold a license for the proposed project. They said the mine would create a significant amount of toxic waste and other contaminants and would cause "irreversible risks" to land used by Sweden's indigenous Sami people. The British company Beowulf Mining and Swedish subsidiary Jokkmokk Iron Mines AB are seeking permission from the Swedish state to go forward with plans for the iron ore mine. The Sami have expressed concerns over the proposed mine and said it would disrupt reindeer herding, as well as hunting and fishing, and destroy the land. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg joined a protest organized by the Sami people against the proposed mine over the weekend. "The future of humanity should be prioritized above the short-term profit of a company," Thunberg said in a statement. The mine, proposed for the Gallok region, has gone forward without the "free, prior and informed consent" of the indigenous Sami people, the UN's independent experts charged. The rights experts said the proposed open-pit mine could endanger the lives and livelihoods of Sami people, as well as interrupt the migration of reindeer that the Sami herd for sustenance. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The experts pointed to a law passed by the Swedish authorities on January 27, which has yet to go into effect but states that the government is required to consult with the Sami people over actions that concern them. In a statement, the experts noted: "There has been insufficient assessment and recognition of the environmental damage the mine will cause." UN rapporteurs work on a voluntary basis with a mandate from the UN-backed Human Rights Council. They do not represent the UN in an official capacity. The Sami are indigenous to the Sampi region of a part of Sweden historically known as Lapland. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video An estimated 20,000 to 40,000 Sami people live in Sweden, of an approximate total of 100,000 Sami residing in Sweden and in the vast Arctic wilderness of northern Finland, Norway and the Kola peninsula in Russia. Their lifestyle is at risk because of industrial mining and forestry, which encroach on their grazing lands. For much of the 20th century, the Sami people were targeted by state policies that treated their culture as inferior. In recent years, the governments of Finland, Norway and Sweden — but not Russia — have moved to atone for a brutal past by returning artifacts stolen from the Sami people and stepping up efforts to examine past policies against them. The Sami people maintain that their rights go unrecognized and their lands remain vulnerable to exploitation as governments court foreign mining companies. ar/sms (AFP, AP) | 6Nature and Environment
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The summer's improving coronavirus infection rates in Germany have convinced authorities in the country to allow the return of fans to sports stadiums. In 14 of Germany's 16 states, a capacity cap of 50% has been put in place, with the maximum number of spectators set at 25,000. In the state of Bavaria (where Bayern Munich play), as well as in the city-state of Hamburg, the authorities have taken a stricter approach. The key statistic to determine whether measures will be relaxed remains the seven-day incidence rate of 35 per 100,000 people. The delta variant is picking up pace across Germany, but with the country's vaccination rollout well underway, some football clubs believe it is time for the authorities to reconsider. In a column for football magazine Kicker, Eintracht Frankfurt's new head of sport Markus Krösche questioned whether the most recent developments require a different approach. The former RB Leipzig sporting director went on to warn that the handling of the situation could "directly and indirectly" result in jobs being lost due to the ongoing financial damage being caused by the pandemic. "The incidence is still being used as a benchmark to determine the fans' return… As if there was no vaccination campaign, as if tests aren't widely available," Krösche wrote. "The pandemic of 2021 shouldn't feel or look like the pandemic of 2020." In his column, Krösche also asked whether the authorities' current strategy is helpful in convincing people to get vaccinated. Similar sentiments were voiced by Borussia Dortmund CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke. "At some point, those vaccinated should be rewarded for it somehow," he said. Among the fiercest critics of the restrictions is Union Berlin's president Dirk Zingler. "No one explains why the decision is like it is. Fifty percent of the stadium at (Berlin's) Olympic Stadium or in Dortmund isn't the same as 50% of the Stadion an der alten Föresterei (Union Berlin's stadium). You just don't understand much of it." While football clubs around the world have been facing financial difficulties as a result of the pandemic, the 2021 Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance found that the Bundesliga was the best league among Europe's so-called "top five" in dealing with the implications. According to the report, published in July, securing the immediate future of Bundesliga's media deals and German football's "collective foundations of economic stability," both contributed to stability during the crisis. "The Bundesliga seems to have weathered the COVID-19 storm," the report stated. For their part, many clubs have been contributing to Germany's vaccination rollout. Fans could spontaneously get their jab ahead of the second division game between Schalke and Hamburg recently, while a similar offer was available for Stuttgart fans ahead of their friendly against Barcelona. In cities like Dortmund, Nuremberg and Aue, football stadiums were turned into makeshift vaccination centers. Meanwhile, to show support, second division clubs came out of the tunnel with their right sleeves folded up for the 2021-22 season's second matchday. More than 2,000 people have been vaccinated at Borussia Dortmund's Westfalenstadion, as of July 29, with the club offering those getting vaccinated at Germany's biggest football ground a stadium tour free of charge. Trying to convince supporters to get the jab, Borussia Dortmund also said vaccinated fans will be prioritized in access to tickets. Some players have agreed to set an example. Borussia Mönchengladbach's Christoph Kramer and Patrick Herrmann called on supporters to get vaccinated, saying that while they had their doubts, they chose to do it. "We would love it if everyone gets vaccinated so that the world will return to normal as quickly as possible," said Kramer, a former Germany international. "See you soon in the stadium." But not all players seem to be on board. According to a report from German TV program Sportschau, the willingness to get the jab is "lower than expected" among Germany's footballers. The DFL and the clubs haven't made any information available as to the number of vaccinated players. In pre-pandemic times, the Bundesliga was known for its lively fan culture. While the fans' return does provide hope for the future, it does not mean the atmosphere at Germany's stadiums will return to what they used to be. Several ultra groups in Germany's top two divisions have said there will not be any organized support under current conditions. Their reasons range from the use of personalized tickets to the inability to stand together as a group. "We can understand every fan who can't take this anymore and is craving for the stadium. Believe us, we feel the same way," Harlekins Berlin 98, a Hertha Berlin fan group, wrote on its website. "But for us ultras, a return would only be worth its name once we can experience fan culture the same way we used to before the pandemic."
All in all, German football will be looking for things to feel, look and sound as close as possible to football as it used to be in pre-pandemic times. However, be it for players, clubs or fans, the Bundesliga's 2021-22 season promises to be anything but normal. | 9Sports
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A coronavirus variant that was identified in South Africa has been detected in Germany for the first time, the Social Affairs Ministry in the state of Baden-Württemberg said on Tuesday. The infection was detected in one individual that had recently traveled to Germany with family after a long stay in South Africa. All of the family members had reportedly tested negative for the coronavirus five days after arrival. However, a week later, several family members began showing mild symptoms. Six people from three households are now confirmed to have been infected with coronavirus, and one infection is of the South African variant. Samples from the other family members are now being tested to determine if the South African variant is present, the ministry said. The South African variant, and another originating in the United Kingdom, appear to be more transmissible than the original virus. It has also been been detected in the UK, Finland, France and Israel. Switzerland, Denmark and the UK have banned incoming travelers from South Africa. Although health experts do not yet consider the mutated coronavirus to be more dangerous, its accelerated spread presents a greater challenge to public health officials, who are racing to vaccinate populations. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The UK variant has already been detected in Germany. Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that the UK variant could "take the lead over the old virus" in a very short amount of time, adding that there is a danger of exponential growth of cases. "That's why we need to be extremely careful," Merkel said. Vaccine makers have said that vaccines currently available should be effective against the new variant. Frank Montgomery, chairman of the World Medical Association, told DW that the presence of the new variant in Germany makes the fast rollout of a vaccine even more critical. "In Germany, we have a high rate of complete anti vaxxers, about 15% of the population who will not take any vaccination at all," he said, while ruling out calls right now for mandatory vaccination. "The enforcement of a mandatory vaccination will be very difficult," he said, adding that once more people are vaccinated, and the effects are better known, discussion of requiring a COVID vaccination could move forward. "Within the next 12 months, we need to vaccinate everyone who is willing in this population and then we can discuss all these difficult issues," he said.
wmr/rt (AFP, Reuters) | 5Health
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After the German election on September 26, when Merkel finally steps down after 16 years as chancellor, the European Union will say goodbye to its longest-serving head of government. Put plainly, Merkel's been a major player at the EU level for a long time. She has seen and handled her fair share of crises in the bloc, and she's ultimately helped keep the EU together in some of its most divisive hours. Yet despite always pulling for Team EU at the end of the day, Merkel has often only taken action after evading decision-making for as long as feasibly possible. And lest anyone doubt how definitive this style of hers is, there's a slang German verb for being indecisive and not doing anything: it's called "merkeln." While Merkel has been a dependable rhetorical advocate for the ideological value of the EU, many of her decisions at the EU level were the stuff of feet-dragging, last-minute turnarounds or even of no other option left. That doesn't mean they weren't uncontroversial or even sometimes bold. During the eurozone and Greek financial crisis, Merkel eventually countered both her conservative party's dogma of tight spending controls and German popular sentiment to bailout the Greek government. But only after first insisting that such a move was off-the-table and stringing out action until the whole bloc teetered on the brink of a system-shattering debt default. The harsh austerity conditions of the Greek bailouts and aid packages to other struggling southern Mediterranean nations also led to criticism that Merkel was imposing the "German way" on other countries — not exactly a sentiment that fostered EU solidarity. I remember conversations in my own Spanish family that were tinged with resentment over Germans continuing to benefit from the low costs in Spain on their package beach vacations while Spaniards were seeing public spending slashed and unemployment skyrocket. Then, in 2015, when millions of Syrians asylum-seekers sought safety in Europe, Merkel made the politically courageous and morally correct decision not to close Germany's borders. But this was still reactive, occurring only after attempts to agree upon an EU-wide refugee distribution system had failed and overwhelmed EU nations like Hungary allowed tens of thousands of asylum-seekers to travel onward to Germany's southern border. Most recently, her yes to "coronabonds," or debt shared at the EU level — anathema to Merkel throughout her time as chancellor — came only after many no's that initially persisted even in the face of an unprecedented pandemic-spurred economic shutdown. As a conservative, Merkel is by definition set on maintaining the status quo. She's unwilling to take a step forward until she's got her back up against a wall. But while this has helped keep the EU lumbering along so far, it is no longer enough. The next German chancellor needs to provide proactive, visionary leadership if the bloc's current and future challenges are to be met. And while some Germans may feel uneasy for historical reasons about acting as a driver of European politics, it is important to remember there is a difference between power and leadership, and that many Europeans today see Berlin as their "go-to" capital. For the sake of the EU, the next German chancellor must be someone who isn't just on the team but can rally it. They need to be able to preempt challenges instead of reacting haphazardly to them, and the challenges are plenty. With the climate crisis in full swing, failing to act boldly is not an option for a global political leader. Russia's no-holds-barred attitude calls for someone who can anticipate and prepare for potential future standoffs, rather than someone who chooses to bypass its neighbor out of domestic energy interests and geopolitical wishful thinking. China's determination to entrench its global influence and a decidedly cool trans-Atlantic relationship means the EU must also position itself stronger and more independently, including by meeting defense spending targets. Additionally, the bloc's internal fissures demand both more innovative and creative thinking about future political arrangements, perhaps even ones that move away from Merkel's consensus-at-all-costs approach when constitutionally possible. Last but not least, the next chancellor must communicate more passionately, selling EU successes and inspiring trust and excitement among its citizens, especially the younger generation. These EU citizens include Germans, by the way. An April ECFR poll found a whopping 45% of Germans are either ambivalent about being an EU member or think it's a bad thing. The next German chancellor can start proactively building the EU future right at home. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video | 7Politics
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Flames tore through an apartment block in the city of Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, overnight into Thursday. The city's fire department told reporters that 46 people found in the building had been confirmed dead and another 41 injured. Firefighters are unsure of the causes of the fire, but said it had burned most intensely where piles of clutter had been stacked. Kaohsiung's fire department officials said the "extremely fierce" blaze took hold at about 3 a.m. local time. The fire was successfully extinguished after about four hours, and rescuers scoured the building in a search for survivors on Thursday morning. Officials said the building was about 40 years old, with shops in lower levels, empty space above and some 120 households higher up. Mayor Chen Chi-mai said the building was partly abandoned, having previously been host to restaurants, karaoke lounges and a cinema. The lower levels of the building were left completely blackened. Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen urged authorities to help relocate affected families and fully investigate the cause. About 145 firefighters and 72 fire trucks and were dispatched for the rescue mission. rc/fb (AP, dpa) | 1Catastrophe
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Mali's military junta on Monday said it was withdrawing from military accords it signed with France nearly a decade ago. The West African country broke off the agreements it signed in 2014, when then French President Francois Hollande said he had decided to intervene in Mali to fight against Islamist insurgency. The junta's announcement had been expected for some time, ever since France and other European partners announced their decision to withdraw from Mali in February after fighting jihadi violence in the country for nearly 10 years. "For some time now, the government of the Republic of Mali notes with regret a profound deterioration in military cooperation with France," junta spokesman Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga said in a televised statement. In announcing its decision in February, France laid the blame on the country's deteriorating political situation and repeated coups. There was a surge in violence after France decided to pull troops, with relations between Paris and Bamako deteriorating even further For its part, Paris "considers that this decision is unjustified and absolutely contests any violation of the bilateral legal framework," a French Foreign Ministry spokesman told reporters. "France will continue the withdrawal in good order of its military presence in Mali, in line with the commitments it has made to its partners," the spokesman said. Mali's ruling military junta has condemned "flagrant violations" of its national sovereignty by departing French soldiers. Government spokesman Maiga cited multiple instances of the French violating their country's air space. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Maiga also spoke about France's announcement to end military operations in Mali in June 2021, and its subsequent decision to pull troops earlier in the year. Last month, Mali accused the French military of spying on a military base in northern Mali, after the French military released what it said was footage of a mass grave there. France said Malian authorities and Russian-linked mercenaries were trying to accuse French soldiers of committing grave crimes. rm,es/dj (AFP, dpa) | 2Conflicts
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Over 7,000 flights were scrapped worldwide during the Christmas weekend as the highly transmissible omicron variant of the coronavirus hindered holiday plans, tracking website Flightaware.com reported on Sunday. More than 2,000 flights have been scrubbed so far on Sunday with more than 4,000 delays. On Saturday, more than 2,800 flights were canceled, including nearly 990 flights from or to United States airports alone. Friday saw around 2,400 cancellations. Chinese airlines accounted for the highest number of groundings, with China Eastern scrapping more than 1,000 flights, over 20% of its flight plan, on Friday and Saturday. Air China scrapped about 20% of its scheduled departures over the period. Several airlines, including Lufthansa, Delta and United, are facing staff shortages with pilots, cabin crew and other employees calling in sick or staying in quarantine. Germany has postponed its goal of inoculating 80% of its population with at least one dose and now wants to reach the target by the end of January, a government spokesperson told newspaper Bild am Sonntag. The government had planned to achieve the target by January 7. Until now, only 74% of the population is vaccinated and nearly 5.3 million people would need to get their first jabs to meet the original deadline. However, the goal of 30 million vaccinations by the end of the year is likely to be met by as early as Monday, the Bild am Sonntag reported from government circles. According to the report, only about 50,000 vaccinations were still pending on Saturday. Meanwhile, Germany on Sunday reported 10,100 more coronavirus infections and 88 new deaths. The seven-day incidence dropped to 220.7 per 100,000 people from 242.9 the previous day. France on Saturday recorded more than 100,000 virus infections in a single day, for the first time since the pandemic began. More than 1 person in 100 in the Paris region has tested positive in the past week, according to the regional health service. Most new infections are linked to the omicron variant, which experts predict will be dominant in France in the coming days. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have introduced new restrictions to stem the spread of the new omicron variant. In Wales, only six people can meet in pubs and restaurants. In Scotland, crowds at large events have been cut to a few hundred spectators. From Monday, residents of Scotland can only meet in groups of three households. Gatherings in Northern Ireland have also been limited to just a few people. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has ruled out stricter measures for England despite record numbers of new cases. He is under pressure from backbenchers of his own center-right Conservative Party, who resolutely reject further curbs. The state of emergency in the Czech Republic, introduced by the previous populist government, ended on Sunday. However, new measures will come into effect on Monday. Adults entering from other EU countries will require a negative PCR test, even if they are fully vaccinated or recovered. The new government has also reduced the number of spectators at large events. China on Sunday recorded its highest daily coronavirus caseload in 21 months as infections doubled in the country's latest hotspot, Xian. The northwestern city, which has a population of 13 million, was entering its fourth day of a strict lockdown, when it reported 155 locally transmitted cases for Saturday, official figures showed on Sunday. India will vaccinate those between 15 and 18 years of age, and administer booster jabs to frontline workers and some older citizens amid concerns about the omicron variant. In an address late Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said young people would begin to receive their shots from January 3. He also said booster doses will be administered beginning January 10 as a "precaution" to health workers as well as those above 60 years with comorbidities, after a recommendation from doctors. The Palestinian Health Ministry said Sunday it had identified the first case of the omicron coronavirus variant in the Gaza Strip. The carrier is a Gaza resident who was infected within the coastal territory. The discovery could pose a new challenge to the enclave's under-developed health system. In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, three cases of omicron variant had been detected among Palestinians on December 16, and the number had since risen to 23. Oman now requires foreign travellers aged 18 or older to have received at least two vaccine doses to enter the sultanate, the state news agency reported on Sunday. The sultanate also canceled a previous decision that suspended entry from South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe. Algeria on Sunday implemented a vaccine passport that will be required to enter public venues. The measure is being seen as a way of addressing vaccine hesitancy. "More than 13 million vaccines risk being out of date if they do not quickly find takers,'' Health Minister Abderrahmane Benbouzid said earlier this month. Last week professor Riyadh Mahyaoui, who is a leading member of the Algerian government's scientific committee, said that 10 million Algerians had their first inoculation out of a population of 45 million people. In Australia, the most populous state of New South Wales on Sunday hit a record number of new COVID-19 infections with 6,394 more cases and witnessed a spike in hospitalizations. Thousands of people are quarantined at home in Australia after testing positive for the virus or coming in contact with someone who has. Over 70% of infections in the country are from the omicron variant but New South Wales does not conduct genome testing to determine the variant. However, the state's Health Minister, Brad Hazzard, said on Sunday that omicron is spreading. "We would expect that pretty well everybody in New South Wales at some point will get omicron,'' he said. "If we're all going to get omicron, the best way to face it is when we have full vaccinations including our booster.'' mm, dvv/dj (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters) | 5Health
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China's foreign ministry has expressed "strong dissatisfaction" with the United States after it raised concerns over Beijing’s COVID-19 control measures. "We express strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to the groundless accusations against China's pandemic prevention policy from the US in its statement, and have lodged solemn representations," foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said in a statement late Saturday. Meanwhile, cases in China's most populous city of Shanghai are continuing to rise as residents struggle over food and basic supplies. The city on Sunday reported 25,000 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases. Streets of the financial hub, which houses 26 million people, have remained under a strict lockdown as part of the city's "zero tolerance" COVID measure. Only healthcare workers, delivery personnel, volunteers and those with special permission are being allowed to go out. While the infections in Shanghai are less compared to some other cities across the globe, the outbreak is China's worst since the virus emerged in the city of Wuhan in 2019. Here are the latest major developments on coronavirus from around the world: The number of available doses of the coronavirus vaccines has outstripped demand in many areas, two years after the race to vaccinate the world against the virus. Over 13 billion doses of the vaccines have been produced so far, 11 billion of which have been administered, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) has said. "Since mid-2021, global vaccine production has exceeded global vaccine demand and this gap has continuously risen," IFPMA's director general Thomas Cueni told news agency AFP. However, a considerable gap still remains in inoculation rates between the richest and poorest nations. Gavi, which co-leads the Covax global distribution scheme, is conducting a summit calling for increased funds to tackle the inequality in vaccine access. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video India on Sunday started rolling out booster doses of coronavirus vaccine to all adults. Free shots at government centers, however, are limited to people above the age of 60 and front-line workers. India is calling the dose a "precautionary'' shot instead of a booster and it will be available to people nine months after receiving their second jab, the health ministry said on Friday. People outside the priority groups will need to pay for the inoculation at private health facilities, the ministry said. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Saudi Arabia on Saturday announced that it will allow up to 1 million people join the hajj pilgrimage this year. The Hajj Ministry "has authorized one million pilgrims, both foreign and domestic, to perform the hajj this year," it said in a statement. Saudi authorities had drastically restricted the number of people allowed to join the pilgrimage after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. In 2020, only 1,000 pilgrims were permitted to participate. And last year, that number was raised to 60,000. This year's hajj will take place in July. The ministry's announcement on Saturday said that the pilgrimage will be limited to fully vaccinated people under age 65. Those coming from outside Saudi Arabia will be required to submit a negative COVID-19 PCR result from a test taken within 72 hours of travel. The government wants to promote pilgrims' safety "while ensuring that the maximum number of Muslims worldwide can perform the hajj," the statement said. In Germany, the nationwide 7-day incidence rate has dropped to its lowest level since the end of January. The Robert Koch Institute public health agency said on Sunday that the figure — which represents the number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants over a week — was down to 1097.9. A week ago, the nationwide incidence was 1457.9 The country recorded 55,471 new COVID infections over the past 24 hours. Despite the falling number of new cases, hospitals and medical staff continue to remain under enormous pressure, said the Association of Senior Hospital Physicians. Michael Weber, the head of the association, told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung on Saturday that scheduled surgical procedures are having to be postponed in 60% of German hospitals. He added that in 3 out of every 10 hospitals patients are being transferred to other clinics due to shortage of capacity. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video In Peru, a state of emergency was declared on Saturday in the South American nation's tourism industry, which had suffered a devastating blow from the coronavirus pandemic. Peru went from receiving 4.4 million foreign tourists in 2019 to 900,000 in 2020. While in 2021, only 400,000 visited, according to official figures.
The Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism is slated to approve a contingency plan within 15 days, which will include financial rescue measures and promoting investment in tourism. The country had battled a third wave of the pandemic in December but infection numbers have plummeted in recent weeks. dvv,sri/jc (AFP, Reuters, AP) | 5Health
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Military investigators recovered the black box Tuesday of the military transport plane that crashed over the weekend in the town of Patikul on Jolo island 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) south of the capital Manila. Fifty-two people died in the country's worst military air disaster. Cirilito Sobejana, the chief of staff of the Philippines armed forces, said troops had cordoned off a 1-kilometer radius around the crash site in their search effort. "The area is restricted so that the pieces of evidence they gather are uncontaminated," Sobejana told dpa. He added, "It's hard to speculate what really happened [...] It's good that the black box has been recovered and we can hear the last conversations of the pilots and crew." The pilot did not survive the crash. The biggest clues as to what went wrong will come from the black box. The Lockheed C-130 was carrying 96 passengers, most of them recent military graduates, headed to Jolo island to assist in counterinsurgency operations against the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group. Of the 96 on board, 49 were killed along with three civilians on the ground. An additional 47 troops and four civilians on the ground were injured, leaving some in critical condition. The death toll rose to 52 on Monday after two soldiers succumbed to the injuries they sustained in the crash. Witnesses on the ground told conflicting accounts. Sobejana, the armed forces chief of staff, told Reuters, "I spoke to the survivors and they said the plane bounced two to three times and zig-zagged. The pilot tried to regain power because he wanted to lift the plane but it was too late. The right wing hit a tree." Witnesses on the ground said that part of the landing gear did not come out, while others said the plane approached the ground much too fast. Sobejana disputed earlier accounts and said no one jumped from the plane before it crashed and burst into flames. The large number of survivors can be attributed to the fact that the front of the airplane's fuselage was sliced open on impact and those not knocked unconscious in the crash seized the opportunity to flee from the wreckage. Military spokesman Edgard Arevalo said the plane was in "very good condition" and had 11,000 flying hours remaining before it was due for maintenance ar/rt (dpa, Reuters) | 1Catastrophe
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Nike on Thursday announced that it will exit the Russian market for good and not reopen. The company had already temporarily closed stores in the days following the invasion of Ukraine on February 24. The move comes as Western companies are increasingly pulling out of Russia over the ongoing war in Ukraine. The company doubled down its choice to leave the Russian market in an emailed statement. "Nike has made the decision to leave the Russian marketplace. Our priority is to ensure we are fully supporting our employees while we responsibly scale down our operations over the coming months," the firm said, adding that it would also suspend access to its websites and apps in the country. The retailer had already temporarily closed stores and not renewed licensing agreements with its Russian retailers, but this marks its first official withdrawal from the Russian economy. Nike gets less than 1% of its revenue from Russia, according to Reuters. This move will have few material effects on its business, but it is still largely seen as one that supports the company's stance on social issues. Nike has in the past backed American football quarterback Colin Kaepernick and his decision to kneel during the national anthem in protest of racism in the United States. Companies across tech, entertainment and finance have all pulled out of Russia in recent months. Telecoms equipment maker Cisco joined Nike on Thursday, winding down its business in Russia and Belarus. McDonald's and Starbucks suspended operations in Russia as early as March. Amazon shuttered operations with Russia and Belarus in the same month. Foreign companies have been motivated to accelerate their departure from Russia under threat of new laws that may allow Moscow to take company assets and impose criminal penalties. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video asw/rt (AFP, Reuters) | 7Politics
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North Korea has told the World Health Organization (WHO) that it has tested more than 30,000 people for COVID-19 up to June 10 but that it has not yet found a single case of the virus. In a monitoring report, the WHO said North Korea's testing numbers included 733 people who were tested during June 4 to 10, of whom 149 had exhibited influenza-like symptoms or severe respiratory infections. The isolated and secretive dictatorship has banned tourists, jetted out diplomats and severely restricted cross-border traffic and trade to stop the virus from reaching the country. But many experts doubt North Korea's claim that it has not found a single case of the virus. They say the country's poor health infrastructure and porous border with China — its major ally and economic lifeline — mean that some people would have caught the infection. North Korea's population is estimated at about 25 million, meaning that barely one in 1,000 people have been tested. Here's a roundup of the major coronavirus developments around the world: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to order the arrest of anyone refusing COVID-19 vaccinations. "Don't get me wrong. There is a crisis being faced in this country. There is a national emergency. If you don't want to get vaccinated, I'll have you arrested and I'll inject the vaccine in your butt,'' Duterte said in televised remarks. "If you will not agree to be vaccinated, leave the Philippines. Go to India if you want or somewhere, to America,'' he said, adding that he would order village leaders to gather a list of uncooperative residents. Pakistan has reached a deal to procure 13 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from BioNTech-Pfizer, according to the health minister. The doses are set to arrive by the end of 2021, although an exact timeline is not yet available, Health Minister Faisal Sultan told Reuters news agency. The South Pacific archipelago nation of Fiji is experiencing an intensifying coronavirus outbreak. The country has reported 180 new cases reported on Tuesday. The current outbreak began in April and has resulted in seven deaths and numerous restrictions, although so far the island nation has resisted a nationwide lockdown. New Zealand Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta said this week that it was providing an additional 10 million New Zealand dollars ($7 million, €5.9 million) for COVID-19 operations and food supplies in Fiji. Germany's seven-day incidence, which measures the number of coronavirus cases per 100,000 people within a week, has fallen to 8.0, according to the country's Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases. Authorities reported 455 new cases and 77 coronavirus-related deaths in the past 24 hours on Tuesday, the RKI added. Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed the fall in infections but warned that the pandemic is not yet over. A government spokesperson also announced on Tuesday that the German leader has recently received her second vaccine dose. She went with Moderna for the second shot after receiving AstraZeneca for the first. Amid falling numbers and the lifting of restrictions, the retail sector is making up for lost ground. Last week, retail sales in city centers recovered to 8% below pre-crisis levels, Stefan Genth, CEO of the German Retail Association (HDE), said. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Italy is scrapping mandatory masks outdoors from June 28, the government has announced. Mandatory masks were imposed in October last year amid a second infection wave. Now COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are in decline and the government has been steadily lifting restrictions since April. Russia reported 546 coronavirus-related deaths on Tuesday, the most in a single day since February. The number came amid a surge in new cases that authorities have blamed on the new variant nicknamed delta. The government's coronavirus taskforce reported 16,715 new cases in the last 24 hours, including 6,555 in Moscow. Israeli Prime Minister warned of a new coronavirus outbreak — likely of the delta variant — on Tuesday after a rise in infections was recorded among travelers. While 55% of the country's population has already been fully vaccinated, Israel reported its highest number of new infections since April with some vaccinated individuals among the new cases. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Tuesday that the first locally developed vaccine would be called Turkovac on the same day that the first dose of the first phase trial was administered to a male volunteer. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Iranian President-elect Ebrahim Raisi pledged on Tuesday to speed up the country's lacklustre vaccination program in an attempt to relaunch Iran's faltering economy. The Islamic Republic will rely on three possible homegrown vaccines as well as imported Sputnik V doses and doses of Cuban-developed vaccines if necessary, government spokesperson Ali Rabiei said. The US government said on Tuesday that it was increasing efforts to vaccinate young adults as the country observes a concerning spread of the so-called delta variant that now makes up some 20% of the COVID-19 infections recorded in the country. Chile's President Sebastian Pinera said on Tuesday that his health authorities were considering the option of administering people with a third COVID-19 vaccine shot amid concerns over the effectiveness of the Sinovac vaccine that has fueled the South American country's rapid vaccination program. kmm,mvb/msh (AFP, AP, Reuters, dpa) | 5Health
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Several police officers from the German state of Hessen are being investigated for far-right links, prosecutors announced on Wednesday. The investigation against 20 police officers included searches of six of their homes and workplaces inside Frankfurt's police headquarters presidium and follow similar probes last year in North Rhine-Westphalia state (NRW). Most of the suspects had sent messages in far-right chat groups from 2016 and 2017, said prosecutors in Hessen state, which includes finance hub Frankfurt and its regional state capital Wiesbaden. Seventeen Hesse officers were suspected of spreading hatred-inciting texts and symbols of former Nazi organizations — outlawed under post-war German law, said prosecutors. The three others, supervising officers, were further accused of obstructing justice while participating in chats but failing to stop the exchanges that continued until 2019. Aged between 29 and 54, all but one officer had been on active duty. Now, none were now allowed to perform duties, said Frankfurt police chief Gerhard Bereswill. One had already been suspended. "Its terrible, it's serious what has been put forward here," said Bereswill. The probe led since April by Frankfurt prosecutors stemmed from pedophile texts found in the smart phone of a special tactival forces (SEK) officer based at Frankfurt presidium but living in adjacent Rhineland Palatinate state. Analysis of his mobile device led to the identification of numerous other participants, including further Frankfurt SEK police officers, said prosecutors assisted by Hesse’s police office for criminal investigation (LKA). Reacting Wednesday, Hesse's Interior Minister Peter Beuth of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat party (CDU) said, if charges were proven, "we will also remove them from the Hesse Police." Unclear Wednesday was whether the offending chats were linked to cases of suspected far-right extremism among Germany's diverse security forces, mentioned in a report by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV) last September. Politicians disagreed about what those scandals meant for police integrity, with Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer dismissing claims of "latent racism." At that time, Beuth's ministry based in Wiesbaden stated that 50 workplace disciplinary cases were proceeding. Dropped had been 29 other cases. In July 2020 in Hesse state, left-wing politician Janine Wissler had received threatening emails after her personal details were accessed via police computers. Similar messages, signed NSU 2.0, went to other public figures, prompting Hesse's former police chief Udo Münch to resign last year, with then-cases still unresolved. The acronym is a reference to a far-right terror cell called the National Socialist Underground (NSU) that murdered 10 people between 2000 and 2007. Early last month, police in Berlin acting at the request of Frankfurt prosecutors, arrested a 53-year-old German on suspicion of sending dozens of written threats. Most victims were men with immigrant backgrounds. The 10th was a policewoman shot dead in 2007 while seated in a parked patrol car in Heilbronn. In July 2019, a senior regional politician of Chancellor Angela Merkel's party was shot dead by a neo-Nazi near Kassel. Three months later, a gunman failed to shoot his way into the synagogue in Halle in Saxony-Anhalt state, but killed two bystanders. ipj/aw (AFP, epd, AP) | 3Crime
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US tennis star Serena Williams has announced that she is ready to step away from the game after winning 23 Grand Slam titles. In an essay published by Vogue magazine on Tuesday, she said she plans to turn her focus to having another child and her business interests. "I'm turning 41 this month, and something's got to give," Williams wrote in the essay. Williams said that she does not like the term "retirement," adding that it "doesn't feel like a modern word." She said that she prefers to think of this change as her "evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me." "Believe me, I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family. I don't think it's fair," she stressed. "If I were a guy, I wouldn't be writing this because I'd be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labor of expanding our family." To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Williams said that she was "reluctant to admit" that she was leaving tennis, calling it a "taboo topic." "The only person I've really gone there with is my therapist!" She added on Instagram that "there comes a time in life when we have to decide to move in a different direction ... now, the countdown has begun.'' Williams is playing this week in Toronto at a hard-court tournament event that leads into the US Open, which is this year's last Grand Slam event. The player was off the tour for about a year after she was injured at Wimbledon in 2021. She returned to single competition at the All England Club this June and lost the first round. Williams has won more Grand Slam singles titles in the professional era than any other player. Margaret Court collected 24, although she won some of them in the amateur era. Referring to Court's record of 24 titles, Williams said, "I'd be lying if I said I didn't want that. Obviously I do. But day to day, I'm really not thinking about her. If I'm in a Grand Slam final, then yes, I am thinking about that record." "Maybe I thought about it too much, and that didn't help. The way I see it, I should have had 30-plus Grand Slams," she wrote. "These days, if I have to choose between building my tennis resume and building my family, I choose the latter." sdi/nm (AP, AFP) | 9Sports
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To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The German government announced on Friday that its participation in the UN military mission in Mali would be suspended until further notice, after Malian authorities did not allow a German military plane access to its airspace. "Again those in power in Mali have not allowed the UN MINUSMA mission access to its airspace. A planned rotation of personnel is therefore not possible. That has effects on our engagement, given that the security of our soldiers has the highest priority," the Defense Ministry said on Twitter. Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht criticized her opposite number in Mali's military government, Colonel Sadio Camara, in her attached statement. "Camara's actions speak a different language to his words. Therefore we must take measures and will halt the operations of our reconnaissance forces and CH-53 [a type of military cargo helicopter] transport flights until further notice," Lambrecht was quoted as saying. The Bundeswehr military withdrew around 60 soldiers from the country last month amid a similar dispute, when German armed forces were prevented from boarding a civilian flight by Bamako in an act Berlin described at the time as "harassment." To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video A representative of the Malian transitional government (CNT) told DW that he was pleased with Berlin suspending the Bundeswehr mission until further notice. "I applaud this decision! We have long wished that the security of our territory in the air would be guaranteed exclusively by the Malian armed forces! We've always said that, and that's what we wanted," Fousseyni Ouattara, deputy chairman of the CNT's defense committee, said. However, Malian civil society said they were appalled by the news from Germany. "This decision is more than regrettable! And it comes at a time when Mali needs international solidarity in the fight against terrorism more than ever," Moctar Sy, a member of the Engaged Generation movement, told DW. The German politicians are also disappointed. "It's really a pity that the transitional government of Mali is obstructing the deployment of the Bundeswehr. I think the [suspension of the Bundeswehr mission] is an appropriate reaction to these measures. But it's also a pity that it could also mean the end of the MINUSMA. This is not a good decision for the Malian people — but it is the responsibility of the Malian government," FDP development policy politician Christoph Hoffmann told DW. And Christian Klatt, head of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Bamako, warns that a German withdrawal could lead to other nations withdrawing from the MINUSMA. Mali's military overthrew a civilian government almost 15 months ago, one of three coups since 2012. At the time, it promised rapid elections. Currently, it claims to be planning to stage a vote in February 2024. Western forces, particularly from former colonial power France, had been present in comparatively large numbers in the troubled country for years. However, relations with the junta became increasingly fraught, not least after Mali's decision to bring in Russian mercenaries from the contentious Wagner Group late last year. Mali has called the Russians "advisers," but in February, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a major shakeup of military operations in the Sahel. French troops had been acting in place of Malian forces in some battles with insurgents. While not all French soldiers will be withdraw, with more than half of a peak of 5,100 expected to leave, French forces that do remain will transition into more of a supporting role, leaving Mali's military to take the lead. The German forces in Mali are a large contingent of the UN's MINUSMA peacekeeping mission. Berlin had extended the Bundeswehr deployment to Mali earlier this year, following a visit by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock to the West African nation. Parliament also approved an increase in the upper limit of personnel that could be sent to Mali — from 1,100 to 1,400. But earlier last month, Mali's government ordered the spokesman of the UN peacekeeping mission, MINUSMA, to leave the country. German Free Democrat member of parliament Alexander Müller told DW that Mali has "turned towards Russia. And I wonder why they did it, because I cannot imagine that Russia has better interests for the Mali government." ar, dh, msh/jcg (AFP, dpa) While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing. | 7Politics
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The president of the German Bundesbank on Tuesday announced that it would take over a year for inflation to fall to an acceptable level. Joachim Nagel, who heads Germany's central bank, predicted that annual inflation in 2023 would still stand at 7% with the effect of lower interest rates taking longer to have the desired impact. Nagel told German broadcaster NTV that he expected inflation in Germany to drop next year, but he added that the European Central Bank would need to keep hiking up interest rates. "It will still take some time before inflation is inflation will be back where it belongs, namely at 2%," Nagel said. "That means we will still go through some tough months," he added. Nagel said it would take between 18 months and two years for the rate hikes to be fully effective, Nagel said, adding, "That's why I have to ask for patience at this point." The banking chief said the ECB has already acted strongly with four interest rate hikes this year. "The rate hikes will continue," said Nagel. "We've already gone some way, but there is still more to follow." To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Nagel added that he expected inflation rates to drop in December because of measures introduced by the German government to help businesses and consumers with rising energy prices. The ECB raised its main interest rate by 0.5 percentage points to 2.5% last week, with rates first rising in July from a record low of 0% that had lasted years. Soaring consumer prices because of higher energy costs in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine led the ECB to change its policy on the cost of borrowing. Although higher interest rates are seen as a crucial tool to keep inflation in check, they also place a burden on the economy by making loans to companies and households more expensive to repay. The ECB's latest forecast for the eurozone is an annual average inflation rate of 8.4% in 2022, falling to 6.3% next year and 3.4% in 2022. While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing. rc/sms (dpa, Reuters) | 7Politics
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Germany will supply Ukraine with seven self-propelled armored howitzers, Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht announced on Saturday. The Panzerhaubitzen 2000 artillery system is a track-mounted vehicle with a cannon that can fire shells up to 40 kilometers (25 miles), according to the German military. Germany will also offer training on how to use the heavy artillery. Lambrecht made the announcement during a trip to Slovakia to meet with German soldiers who have been deployed in the eastern European country that shares a small border with Ukraine. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The German Defense Ministry did not give a time frame for the delivery of the howitzers, but the training of Ukrainian soldiers is set to begin next week. The seven artillery pieces will not be taken out of those that have been made available for the German Bundeswehr but rather from a separate pool that includes pieces that have been set aside for repairs. The heavy weapons will be delivered following maintenance over the next few weeks, Lambrecht and her chief of defense, General Eberhard Zorn, told reporters in Slovakia. The German mass-market newspaper Bild reported on Thursday reported that these artillery pieces should be ready by the end of June. Lambrecht has repeatedly insisted that Germany would not give up heavy weapons needed by the Bundeswehr. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Germany has more than 100 of these howitzers, of which only 40 are currently ready for deployment, Bild reported. The delivery of German howitzers marks another shift in Berlin's policy towards arming Ukraine. The German government under Chancellor Olaf Scholz has repeatedly come under fire, especially from its partners in Kyiv, for not doing enough to support Ukraine against the Russian invasion. The first U-turn saw Berlin go back on its tradition of not sending weapons into regions involved in conflict, but until recently, it had been reluctant to send heavy weaponry. The German artillery will expand the handful of howitzers that have also been pledged by the Netherlands. The German and Dutch militaries are set to cooperate in the training of some 20 Ukrainian soldiers — already with some artillery experience — who will be trained starting next week in the western German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, German news program Tagesschau reported. Lambrecht said the German howitzers will only be sent once the Ukrainian soldiers know how to use them. ab/sms (dpa, AFP) | 2Conflicts
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Protesters have taken to the streets in Austria on Saturday, a day after the government announced it was locking down the country. Police reported 30,000 people participated in the rally and there were ten arrests, all for violating COVID-19 restrictions or use of banned Nazi symbols. Austria became the first European country to reimpose a full COVID lockdown on Friday. The government also made vaccines mandatory for citizens from February 2022. The strict rules prompted anger among sections of the population, with the leader of the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) — who is currently diagnosed with COVID — saying the rules set the country on track for "dictatorship." Police said Friday three young Austrians from Linz admitted they planned to ambush police officers during the planned protests, given their dissatisfaction with tighter restrictions. The two teenagers and a 20-year-old said they also intended to set officers on fire, DPA news agency reported. Police say around 1,300 officers are going to be deployed across the country to keep things under control, like making sure people wear face coverings as required at all times and adhere to other health safety guidelines. Austria previously imposed a lockdown for the unvaccinated earlier in the week, but a rising number of infections put pressure on the government to act quickly to curb the spread of the virus. Several other European countries, like Germany and the Netherlands, are also reeling under a new wave of infections, triggering debate over whether vaccinations alone can do the job of slowing a resurgence of the virus. In Rotterdam, the Netherlands' second-largest city, protests turned violent on Friday evening as people rallied against a government plan to impose strict rules. Here are the major developments on coronavirus from around the world: Germany recorded 63,924 new coronavirus infections and 248 new deaths over the past 24 hours, data from the Robert Koch Institute, the country's public health authority, showed on Saturday. Germany is currently reeling under a fourth wave of infections, with Health Minister Jens Spahn saying that a new lockdown "can't be ruled out." Germany's Health Ministry released a statement in support of booster shots calling the vaccines produced by BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna "safe, effective and equally suitable for booster vaccinations." The statement added "There is enough vaccine for everyone." The Czech Republic recorded 22,936 new cases Saturday, a pandemic record for that country. On Monday, hotels and restaurants will only be open to the vaccinated and those that have recovered from the coronavirus. Slovakia also hit a pandemic record with 9,171 new infections. According to Our World in Data statistics, currently Slovakia has the worst reported situation with a seven-day incidence of 11,500 new cases per million residents. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Greece ordered around 85 private doctors into work at public hospitals, after asking doctors to voluntarily step up to duty earlier in November. Only a few had answered the call in at the time. Greece entered a fourth wave of the virus this November, with the incidence rate — which is the number of new infections per 100,000 people over a seven-day period — going over 400 this week. It has also laid out stricter rules for the unvaccinated, which go into effect from Monday. Russia reported a record high death toll from COVID-19 with 1,254 deaths, the same number of deaths officially reported as Friday. China severely criticized the UN over comments made by the UN human rights office spokeswoman Marta Hurtado concerning the case of Zhang Zhan, a citizen journalist jailed for her coverage of the pandemic response in China. "We call on the Chinese authorities to consider Zhang's immediate and unconditional release, at the very least, on humanitarian grounds, and to make urgent life-saving medical care available, respecting both her will and her dignity," Hurtado had said in a statement which triggered the official response. The Chinese mission in Geneva has now expressed its displeasure at the "irresponsible" and "erroneous" comments. Singapore's government announced Saturday that it was easing some of the COVID restrictions from Monday, with limits on social interactions being relaxed and dining out being expanded to five people from the current rule of up to two people. Singapore's cases have stabilized over the last month, with daily cases falling below 3,000 on average. Around 85% of the city-state's 5.45 million people have been fully vaccinated. Hong Kong has approved usage of the Chinese Sinovac Biotech COVID vaccine for all children aged over 3. It had previously approved the shots only for those aged over 18. A health official said adolescents between 12 and 17 would be given priority in receiving the vaccines. Hong Kong has followed Beijing's lead in retaining strict travel restrictions to curb COVID outbreaks, in contrast to a global trend of opening up and living with the virus. In Vietnam, Phu Quoc island welcomed 200 fully vaccinated foreign tourists for the first time in nearly two years as Vietnam's borders have been closed due to the pandemic. Upon arrival on the Phu Quoc, the tourists arriving from South Korea can holiday in resorts and do all the sightseeing they please without the mandatory 14-day quarantine. In Australia, several thousand people took to the streets to protest COVID vaccination mandates on Saturday, with some people chanting "Freedom, Freedom" and others carrying "End Segregation Now" signs in downtown Melbourne. Even though vaccination remains voluntary for people in Australia, some states have mandated vaccinations for people in specific occupations and barred the unvaccinated from social activities. Some small crowds also gathered to support the Australian government's measures on Saturday. The country has vaccinated 85% of its population over the age of 16 so far. Canada's health regulator approved Pfizer's COVID shot for children aged 5 to 11. As in the US, the doses given to children of this age group will be just a third of the amount given to teens and adults. New coronavirus infections have dipped in Canada, with daily new cases averaging between 2,000 and 2,500 this week. The US moved to open COVID booster shots to all adults on Friday, though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) must agree to the Food and Drug Administration's decision to do so. If the CDC agrees, tens of millions more Americans could receive their booster shots by the end of the year. Until now, there had been confusion over who really was eligible for the booster shots given factors like age and health had to be taken into account. rm/sri (Reuters, AP, dpa) Correction: A previous version of this article stated that the riots in Rotterdam had "turned deadly." However, while at least two people were shot during the unrest, no deaths have been reported. This has now been corrected. DW English Online apologizes for the error. | 5Health
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China's economy grew by 8.1% in 2021, beating forecasts but slowing down in the final months of the year, according to official data released Monday. The world's second-largest economy expanded at its weakest pace in a year-and-a-half in the final quarter, as it faced headwinds from regulatory curbs, property sector woes, and renewed COVID-19 outbreaks. The economy was off to a strong start in 2021, rebounding from a pandemic-induced slump the previous year. China posted record growth of 18.3% in the first quarter, compared to the previous year, and 7.9% in the second quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics data showed. But it faced an abrupt slowdown in the second half, growing by 4.9% in the third quarter and further weakening to 4.0% in the October-December period. China's central bank on Monday unexpectedly cut a key interest rate for the first time since the height of the pandemic. The People's Bank of China (PBOC) said it was lowering the interest rate on 700 billion yuan ($110.2 billion; €96.60 billion) worth of one-year medium-term lending facility (MLF) loans to some financial institutions to 2.85% from 2.95% in previous operations. The country's economic recovery also has been hampered by renewed coronavirus outbreaks, which prompted Chinese leaders to impose strict border controls or targeted lockdowns on cities including Tianjin, a manufacturing center. "Economic momentum remains weak amid repeated virus outbreaks and a struggling property sector," Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. China's birth rate dropped to a record low in 2021, official data showed Monday, as experts warned of the economic consequences of a faster-than-expected aging population. The birth rate in the country slipped to 7.52 births per 1,000 people, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed. This was down from 8.52 in 2020 and the lowest rate since comparative records began in 1978. adi/ (Reuters, AFP, AP) | 0Business
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Traders in India-administered Kashmir are demanding authorities reopen trade routes with Pakistan as the prices of goods and food continue to skyrocket. In 2008, India and Pakistan opened trade across the "Line of Control (LoC)," a heavily militarized de-facto border dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan. The move was seen as a "confidence-building" measure between New Delhi and Islamabad. However, New Delhi stopped cross-border trade in April 2019 as it prepared to scrap India-administered Kashmir's semi-autonomous status. India claimed the route was being misused by people with links to terrorist groups. During the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, more people are eating fruits and buying other commodities in Muslim-majority regions of India-administered Kashmir. The closure has led to high prices for common goods. Hilal Turkey, chairman of the LoC traders' association in Kashmir, told DW that the prices of commodities have increased by 200% after the suspension. "Buying fruits like grapes, oranges, dates, Miswakhs (teeth-cleaning twigs), or spices that were traded through the LoC is now beyond many people's budget," he said. When cross-border trade in Kashmir was active, 21 items were allowed to be traded, including varieties of fruits, vegetables, and handicrafts. The trade was carried out duty-free using a barter system and did not involve exchanges of currency. Trucks would cross the border at the Chakan-da-Bagh station near the town of Poonch, and at a crossing near the town of Uri to the north. The trade route created a frontier economy and provided livelihoods to thousands of people living in remote areas that usually see meagre economic activity. Uri and Chakan-da-Bagh turned into business hubs and thousands of traders from across northern India would converge there to buy commodities at cheaper prices. New shops, warehouses, and restaurants sprang up, engaging local youth as managers, drivers, and daily wage workers. The route also allowed the remote region cheaper access to food staples and commodities that otherwise would enter Kashmir from mainland India at a higher price. Even cotton items and suits brought from Pakistan-administered Kashmir would be sold at cheaper rates on the Indian side of the border. Traditional Pakistani footwear and suits became a big hit. Many boutiques sprang up across Kashmir, selling Pakistani suits. Within ten years, annual trade via the LoC route was estimated to be at the $1.2 billion mark. However, as the trade continued to grow, it also drew controversy as traders in mainland India paying taxes on their goods complained that the cheap, tax-free goods entering India via Kashmir were distorting competition. Additionally, authorities became concerned after reports of narcotics, weapons, and counterfeit currency on trucks coming from Pakistan raised suspicions that the trade was being used to promote anti-India militancy. In April 2019, New Delhi suspended the trade indefinitely. Official data shows more than 4,000 families were directly involved in the day-to-day trade operations across the LoC. Manufacturers, farmers, and truckers that provided and moved goods also benefited. After the route was closed, many traders either stopped the business or are under heavy debt. "We became victims of the harassment from investigative agencies and banks," said LoC traders' association head, Turkey, whose fruit business has since closed. Laborers in the once-bustling border towns now struggle to find work. Before the suspension of trade, laborer Mushtaq Ahmad used to earn $10 a day. "I have three children and one of them quit his studies to work in a hotel in Srinagar because there was no income for the family," Ahmad said. The cross-LoC trade was an important contributor to economic and social development in the conflict-torn Himalayan region. A sign at a bridge crossing the LoC reads: "From home to home, we extend a very warm welcome to our Kashmiri brethren." "The objective of the trade was to bring peace to the region. It did create a virtuous cycle between trade, trust and people-to-people connectivity, with its impact spilling over to the overall India-Pakistan dynamics," said Afaq Hussain, an economist who has done extensive research on the LoC trade route. According to him, the ban has resulted in the loss of goodwill and cooperation that had gradually built because of trade. Hussain has found that trade was critical to promoting peace and regional cooperation in the region, and said it should resume immediately. "The LoC trade may be only a minuscule part of India's overall economy, but its impact goes beyond standard metrics. The cases of thriving businesses and reunited families on both sides of the LoC stand testimony to the effectiveness of these confidence-building measures," he told DW. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Edited by: Wesley Rahn | 0Business
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The driver of a car which rammed into pedestrians in the German city of Trier in December 2020 was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday. Five people were killed — including a nine-week-old baby and the baby's father — when the 52-year-old male drove through a pedestrian zone in his SUV in the western German city that lies in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. He was convicted of five counts of murder and 18 counts of attempted murder. A sixth victim died nearly a year after the attack. The Trier Regional Court also ordered him to be placed in a high-security psychiatric hospital. Prosecutors argued during the year-long trial that the driver had planned the attack with the intention of "killing or injuring as many as possible" with the court accepting this argument. According to a psychiatrist's report, the accused suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and had no recollection of the events of December 1, 2020. The psychiatrist explained that the 52-year-old saw himself as the victim of "a large-scale state conspiracy" and felt he was persecuted, bugged and even being monitored. The trained electrician remained silent throughout the trial. According to the prosecution, the accused was single, unemployed, without a permanent residence and embittered by his personal circumstances. The tragic events in Trier brought back memories of a similar attack in Berlin in 2016 when a truck was driven through a crowded Christmas market, killing 12 people. The attacker, Anis Amri, was shot dead by police while on the run in Italy. jsi/dj (AFP, dpa) While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing. | 3Crime
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Mexican authorities on Thursday said 10 corpses had been found in a sports utility vehicle outside the governor's office in the central state of Zacatecas. The state is gripped by a turf war between the notorious Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels, with an upsurge of violence in recent years. Both syndicates are believed to be fighting for control of drug smuggling routes to the United States. According to the federal Public Safety Department, a man drove the truck into the plaza, then left the car and walked away down an alley. State officials said the car had been driven suspiciously in the area. Zacatecas state governor David Monreal said the find had been made early in the morning and that the bodies showed signs of having been beaten. "They came to leave them here in front of the palace," he said in a video, referring to his offices in a centuries-old building in the state capital, also called Zacatecas. The Plaza de Armas square was lit up with a Christmas tree and holiday decorations at the time. The governor later tweeted that the alleged perpetrators had been arrested, without identifying them. He said security had proved a major challenge in Zacatecas and he promised to deal with the violence. "Bit by bit we will recover our peace. What we received was a cursed inheritance," he said. According to the federal Public Safety Department, a man drove the truck into the plaza, then left the car and walked away down an alley. Zacatecas has become one of the most violent regions of the country as rival gangs vie for control. The state registered 1,050 murders in 2021, about 260 more than in 2020. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has struggled to significantly reduce homicides in Mexico. The first 11 months of 2021 saw 31,615 killings recorded — a decline of just 3.6% from the 32,814 in 2020. rc/jsi (AFP, AP, Reuters) | 3Crime
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Twitter CEO and owner Elon Musk suspended Kanye West's account on Friday after the controversial US musician doubled down on antisemitic comments. Musk in a tweet said, ''I tried my best. Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended.'' The South African-born billionaire, who is also the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, purchased Twitter earlier this year and pledged to strengthen "free speech" on the platform. He reinstated a number of banned profile's, including West's. Musk also previously described himself as a "free-speech absolutist." West, who currently goes by the name Ye, gave an interview to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on the far-right blog "Infowars," with his face completely covered with a balaclava and in which he made antisemitic comments. He also tweeted a picture of a swastika merged with the Star of David before Twitter suspended his account on Friday. His account's suspension was confirmed by Twitter CEO, Elon Musk as he replied to an unflattering picture of himself that was posted by Ye. Jones questioned the rapper's support for Hitler and Nazism, to which West gave a long-winded answer about what he called the Nazi leader's "good" qualities and concluded with "I like Hitler." "Every human being has value to bring to the table, especially Hitler," the Spanish EFE news agency quoted West as saying. The rapper also at another point in the interview denied that Hitler's Nazi Germany killed 6 million Jews, describing it as "factually incorrect." In Germany, such statements denying the Holocaust are illegal. West's latest statements come on the heels of similarly antisemitic comments which have cost him some of his most lucrative deals with large companies, such as Balenciaga, the Gap and Adidas. The remarks triggered widespread outrage and resulted in his accounts on Twitter and Instagram being restricted. The Republican Jewish Coalition strongly condemned West's latest statements as "a horrific cesspool of dangerous, bigoted Jew hatred." "Given his praise of Hitler, it can't be overstated that Kanye West is a vile, repellent bigot who has targeted the Jewish community with threats and Nazi-style defamation," the coalition said in a Thursday statement on its website. It called on conservatives who had previously embraced West to treat him as a "pariah." The Thursday interview comes a week after West had dinner with former US President Donald Trump and white supremacist Nick Fuentes at the latter's Florida estate. The gathering provoked outrage. The artist has courted controversy and promoted conspiracy theories, having previously called slavery a choice and said that the COVID-19 vaccine was "the mark of the beast." The rapper-turned-mogul has been open about having a bipolar disorder. A recent Netflix documentary, "Jeen-Yuhs," laid bare his ongoing mental health problems. rmt/sms (AFP, EFE) | 8Society
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Police in Canada's capital Ottawa on Saturday stepped up efforts to bring an end to three weeks of protests against the country's COVID-19 restrictions. Officers used pepper spray and stun grenades against demonstrators gathered in front of the Parliament building and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's office. Tense scenes unfolded outside the Parliament, with multiple protesters hurling gas canisters at officers. Several people were arrested. By late Saturday, police said they had nearly cleared the area in front of parliament. A number of vehicles were towed away overnight into Saturday, while scores of trucks left the besieged city as the police cordon approached their position. "We told you to leave. We gave you time to leave. We were slow and methodical, yet you were assaultive and aggressive with officers and the horses," police said in a statement to the truckers posted on Twitter. The move to shut down the self-styled "freedom convoy" began Friday when hundreds of police, some in riot gear and some carrying automatic weapons, descended into the protest zone. Around 170 people were arrested on Friday and Saturday, police said. The polarizing protests ostensibly coalesced around pandemic restrictions and COVID vaccine requirements but have transformed into a wider anti-government movement. On Monday, Trudeau invoked emergency powers to deal with the blockade. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video To carry out the operation, police set up 100 checkpoints to starve the protest community of food and fuel. On Friday, hundreds of police descended on downtown in the frigid cold where snow had just fallen. At least one driver had his window smashed and a few were pulled from vehicles and taken into custody. Others who resisted were thrown to the ground and arrested. Three of the most prominent organizers were detained, including two Thursday and one Friday. Police have said that it could take several days to remove the protesters. Elsewhere in Canada on Saturday, police said the Pacific Highway border crossing was closed "due to increased protest activity in the area." Protesters have also used shovels to build chest-high snow embankments there, forming an icy barricade. On Friday afternoon, a steady stream of vehicles departed from Ottawa's Parliament Hill. Those protesters that remained linked arms and were energized in their encounters with police, but as dusk set in, the situation became more tense. Kevin Homaund, a trucker from Montreal, told the AP news agency, "Freedom was never free," adding, "So what if they put the handcuffs on us and they put us in jail?'' Mark, a protester from Nova Scotia who would not give his last name, told Reuters news agency, "If they want to arrest me, I'll put my hands out, and they can twist-tie me up like everybody else here. We're going peaceful." The protesters' umbrella group, which calls itself the "freedom convoy 2022," said, "We will continue to hold the line. We refuse to bow to abuses of power. The world is watching, Canada." mm, ar/fb (AFP, AP, Reuters) | 7Politics
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Financial markets were stunned in April 2020 when the price of oil turned negative for the first time ever. As demand plummeted during the first COVID lockdown, the main US oil benchmark price fell to minus $30 (minus €28) a barrel. Naysayers said prices would never recover. They warned that big oil's days were numbered and the end of the hydrocarbon era was nigh. While they are correct about the direction of travel, their timing was way off. The same five Western oil giants — ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP and Total — who made huge losses in 2020, have just collectively announced more than $196 billion in annual profits, helped on by a spike in oil demand caused by the Ukraine war and the post-pandemic recovery. For much of the first half of last year, the oil price surpassed $100 and in March, Brent crude hit $139 a barrel. For the remainder of the year, it settled between $70 and $95 — much higher than the $40 to $50 needed for oil majors to make profits. Exxon's profit in 2022 was a record not just for itself but for any US or European oil giant. BP's $28 billion profit was the highest in its 114-year history, while Shell made more than double the profit it made in the previous year. As well as soaring oil prices, falling debt levels helped the oil majors to increase capital spending on fossil fuel production as governments prioritized energy security due to the supply shock caused by Western sanctions on Moscow and the Kremlin's inconsistent energy supplies to Europe after the invasion of Ukraine. BP CEO Bernard Looney was denounced by the green lobby when he said he wanted to "dial back" some of the energy giant's investments in renewable energies due to the risk of oil and gas supply shortages causing more price volatility. Public anger at Big Oil's announcements of record profits is visceral, not only due to the urgent green energy push. Over the last year, households and businesses have been hit hard by skyrocketing utility bills and the price of gasoline. While many governments have tried to limit the damage with subsidies, many see Big Oil as profiteering from public misery, so calls for windfall taxes on profits are growing louder. The UK and the European Union have already imposed temporary levies on oil and gas sector profits. Politicians and unions have called for those to be increased. In their results updates, Shell, Total and BP revealed that the new taxes would cost them each about $2 billion — about 5% to 8% of profits. ExxonMobil, meanwhile, is suing the EU to get the bloc to scrap its new windfall tax. The US's largest oil firm argues that Brussels has exceeded its authority by imposing the levy, which it says is normally a role for national governments. Exxon spokesperson Casey Norton said in December that the tax would "undermine investor confidence, discourage investment and increase reliance on imported energy." To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video US President Joe Biden used his State of the Union address this week to call for energy giants to be squeezed further, demanding a quadrupling of taxes paid on share buybacks. "When I talked to a couple of [energy companies], they said, 'We are afraid you are going to shut down all the oil refineries anyway, so why should we invest in them?' We are going to need oil for at least another decade," Biden told Congress. "Instead, they used those record profits to buy back their own stock, rewarding their CEOs and shareholders. Corporations ought to do the right thing." The top Western oil companies paid out a record $110 billion in dividends and share repurchases to investors in 2022, according to a tally by Reuters news agency. Oil giants have slashed their longer-term investments in recent years, partly after the US shale oil bust of the last decade but also after nursing heavy pandemic losses. With an ever-uncertain future due to the green energy transition, reticence remains over major capital spending. More pain could be on the way for consumers and businesses as China reopens after a 3-year zero-COVID policy, further fueling demand for oil while boosting Big Oil's profits further still. Although oil prices are not expected to reach their July 2008 all-time high of $150 a barrel anytime soon, some analysts predict the price could reach $100 again later this year — before a recession or downturn hits major economies and stalls demand. In its latest oil market forecast published Tuesday, the Oxford Energy Institute said that oil prices would reach $95.7 a barrel, partly as a result of demand from Asia's powerhouse economy. Goldman Sachs sees prices returning to $100 by December. Russia said this week it planned to cut production by half a million barrels a day from next month, a move that sent prices higher. Moscow blamed the move on Western oil sanctions, including a European Union price cap of $60 on Russian crude oil. The Kremlin has so far diverted the oil it used to send to Europe to China and India, albeit at a 30% discount. A further sign of strong oil demand came this week from Barclays Capital which forecast even higher profits for the oil majors. It set a share price target of 10 pounds ($12, €11.29) for BP, a near doubling from its Friday price of 5.61 pounds. Edited by: Uwe Hessler | 0Business
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The Taliban asked authorities to shutter girls out of middle and high schools in Afghanistan on Wednesday, according to notice by the Ministry of Education. "We inform all girls high schools and those schools that are having female students above class six that they are off until the next order," the Ministry of Education notice said. The announcement came a day after the spokesman for the Education Ministry released a video congratulating students on returning to classes. The Education Ministry had announced it would open schools for all students, including girls, beginning Wednesday. The notice added school for girls would reopen once a plan was drawn up in accordance with "Islamic law and Afghan culture." Footage from Afghanistan media outlets showed girls breaking down in tears and protesting the sudden shift. "The UN in Afghanistan deplores today's reported announcement by the Taliban that they are further extending their indefinite ban on female students above the 6th grade being permitted to return school, "the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a statement. Ian McCary, charge d'affaires for the US embassy in Kabul, which is currently operating out of Doha in Qatar, tweeted he was "very disappointed" by the order. "All Afghan youth deserve to be educated," he said. Waheedullah Hashmi, a senior member of the Taliban, told the Associated Press than enrolling girls in higher education could erode overall support for the militant group's government. "The leadership hasn't decided when or how they will allow girls to return to school," Hashimi said. Hashimi said there was support for girls' education in urban centers, but that much of rural Afghanistan, particularly in tribal Pashtun regions, remain against the idea of educating girls. Since rising to power in August after US and NATO troops withdrew from Afghanistan, the Taliban have enforced a number of restrictions on women, including cutting off secondary education to girls. It kept secondary schools open for boys. In February, some public universities opened, with the Taliban saying it would allow women to go to universities as long as their classes remained segregated and based on Islamic principles. However, there were mixed reports as women were both allowed and barred from universities. The Taliban barred education for women the last time they were in power between 1996 and 2001, and the international community has repeatedly made education of girls and women a key part of its demands as the Taliban seeks international recognition of its government and greater foreign aid for the country. rm/wmr (AP, Reuters) | 7Politics
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The UN War Crimes Tribunal upheld the conviction Tuesday of Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic, 78, known as the "Butcher of Bosnia," for his role in the genocide in Srebrenica, the siege of Sarajevo, and other war crimes. The verdict is final and cannot be appealed any further. Mladic was convicted in 2017 and sentenced to life in prison for his role as Bosnian Serb military commander during the war in Bosnia, which lasted from 1992 until 1995. The court upheld Mladic's conviction at the now-shuttered International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The five-judge panel Tuesday was led by Presiding Judge Prisca Matimba Nyambe of Zambia. Nyambe dissented from the other judges in the majority of their findings, including in their rejection of Mladic's argument that Srebrenica had been evacuated on "humanitarian grounds." The chamber also dismissed in its entirety an appeal by the prosecution, and found that Mladic was not guilty of a wider genocide in against Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats over the course of the war. Ratko Mladic commanded Bosnian Serb troops during the war in Bosnia, including those responsible for the 1995 massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica. Mladic was indicted at the end of the war in 1995 but remained a fugitive until 2011. His lawyers appealed his conviction and life sentence on the basis, they claim, that he was not responsible for the actions of troops under his command. Video footage from Srebrenica shows him speaking calmly to a 12-year-old Muslim boy before soldiers under his command massacred upwards of 8,000 civilians in the town. He is recorded telling a camera when he returned to the town days later, "We give this town to the Serb people as a gift." To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Munira Subasic, president of the "Mothers of Srebrenica" told DW that Mladic's troops committed genocide wherever they could. "Mladic was destroying everything that did not belong to the Serb people," she told DW's Bosnian service. "To us 'Mothers of Srebrenica' he is the same as Hitler to Jews." Subasic also pledged to continue fighting for hundreds of Mladic's subordinates to face justice. "It's more important to them to learn the truth and to tell their children, not to have their children live a lie, then it is to us," she added. "We know what happened." First indicted in 1995, he went into hiding and became a fugitive from justice for 16 years. Initially, he had a lavish lifestyle as he was supported by the Serbian military, but his fortunes turned in 1999 with the downfall of Serbian nationalist president Slobodan Milosevic. In 2011, he was captured by the then Western-looking Serbian government at his cousin's country house in the northern Serbia and given over to the custody of the court in The Hague. Mladic long tried to cast an image of himself as "a simple man" who was chosen by "fate" to protect his people, blaming the devastation of his country on "the Vatican and Western mafia." Trained in Belgrade in the early 1960s, Mladic was known for confounding international negotiators during the war with long-winded lectures on Serbian history. By the end of the war in Bosnia, even his closest allies questioned his mental state. The late former president of Montenegro, Momir Bulatovic, once told a BBC documentary in the 1990s that he "respected General Mladic as a soldier and a man," however "after three years of war, he'd lost contact with reality." During the war in 1994, his daughter Ana killed herself. Mladic's last request was to visit her grave before being transferred to the court. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas tweeted that he was "relieved" by the Hague tribunal's verdict. He said he hoped the rejection of Mladic's appeal would be "a certain consolation for the victims and the bereaved." US President Joe Biden hailed confirmation, saying it would provide "solace to all those who are grieving." "This historic judgment shows that those who commit horrific crimes will be held accountable," Biden said in a statement. "It also reinforces our shared resolve to prevent future atrocities from occurring anywhere in the world." UN right chief Michelle Bachelet said in a statement that the decision "highlights the determination of the international justice system to ensure accountability no matter how long it may take -- in Mladic's case, nearly three decades after he committed his appalling crimes," Bachelet said in a statement. Mladic's legacy continues to divide Bosnia. For the widows and mothers of his victims in court Tuesday, the decision to uphold his conviction represents a degree of justice and acknowledgment of their trauma. Before the ruling, UN prosecutor Serge Brammertz stressed the importance of the Mladic ruling for victims who continue to live with the trauma of the conflict daily. "If you speak to the survivors, the mothers (of Srebrenica) who lost their husbands, their sons, their lives really stopped on the day of the genocide," Brammertz told reporters. Mela Softic, 37, a marketing specialist who spent her childhood in besieged Sarajevo, agrees. She told Reuters, "Twenty-five years later, I feel as if the war is not over." However, among many Bosnian Serbs, especially war veterans, Mladic is revered as a hero. Milorad Dodik, the leader of the Serbian part of Bosnia, Republika Srpska told reporters just last month, "There was no genocide in Srebrenica. There is no credible evidence or any other evidence that it was genocide." The UN prosecutor Brammertz told AFP, "Denial of genocide is the last phase of the genocide." The work of the International Criminal Court, also seated at The Hague, is widely viewed as the permanent outgrowth of earlier efforts to hold those charged with carrying out war crimes accountable, like the tribunal focused on the former Yugoslavia. ar, rc/aw (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters) Correction: A previous headline for this article incorrectly called Mladic the "Butcher of Serbia." This has been changed to "Butcher of Bosnia."
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Alexander Schallenberg, 52, was sworn in Monday as the new chancellor of Austria by President Alexander Van der Bellen. A career diplomat who served as foreign minister, Schallenberg is a close ally of Sebastian Kurz, who resigned as chancellor Saturday following allegations of corruption in the wake of an investigation that opened last week targeting him and nine others, including senior aides. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU Council President Charles Michel offered their congratulations following the swearing in ceremony. The 35-year-old Kurz and nine others are being investigated for breach of trust, corruption and bribery while Kurz is under investigation separately for perjury. He has denied wrongdoing and initially hesitated to resign, but that position became politically untenable. Prosecutors allege conservative officials in the Finance Ministry used state funds to pay for manipulated polling data and coverage favorable to Kurz starting in 2016. Last week, there were raids on the chancellery and the headquarters of Kurz's People's Party, as well as other locations tied to the scandal. Kurz will remain head of his party, a position he has held since 2016, and become its leading member of parliament after exiting the chancellery. He won election to the parliament in 2017. Kurz's junior coalition partner, the Greens, were adamant Kurz resign. His critics have accused him of overseeing a system that flouted rules on party funding and appointments to state jobs, preferring to install loyalists in his pursuit of power. The opposition believe Schallenberg will continue to do bidding for Kurz, who will remain politically active and who is expected to be somewhat of a "shadow chancellor." "All opposition parties agree there is no change to the Kurz system. He still has all the strings in his hands and designated Chancellor Schallenberg is part of this Kurz system," said Kai Jan Krainer of the Social Democrats, speaking with ORF radio. But Kurz himself addressed the rumors said in a statement Monday on Facebook, saying that he was "not a shadow chancellor." Krainer sat on a parliamentary commission of inquiry that looked into allegations of corruption under the first Kurz government where the People's Party was in coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ). Kurz's first turn at power ended with the so-called "Ibiza-gate" scandal in 2019. Michael Linart, 63, Austria's ambassador to France, will replace Schallenberg at the Foreign Ministry. ar/aw (AFP, dpa, Reuters) | 7Politics
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German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has listed a set of demands which the Taliban government need to abide by if there is to be some form of relationship going forward. Maas told DW that communication with the Taliban would be dependent on these key areas. "What's important is the demands we have communicated to the Taliban as regards maintaining human rights, especially women's rights, an inclusive government and that they distance themselves clearly and unequivocally from terrorist groups, and that there are finally hard facts alongside the pleasant words." The Taliban government has requested that Suhail Shaheen who is their new UN representative, be allowed to make an address before the 76th session of UN General Assembly,currently underway in New York. Speaking to news agency The Associated Press, Shaheen said: "We have all the requirements needed for recognition of a government, so we hope the UN, as a neutral world body recognize the current government of Afghanistan." Maas didn't appear to be too taken by this request telling DW: "I don't think performances at the United Nations are helpful. In my opinion, an address to the General Assembly of the United Nations is not the appropriate forum to bring progress in this matter." Germany has said that there needs to be some form of political dialogue with the Taliban because they would now be the gatekeepers of humanitarian aid. That would not be possible without engagement. On the topic of communicating with the militant group, Maas said: "I think it's right that we talk with the Taliban. For that, a number of channels have emerged in recent weeks." To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The German foreign minister had also addressed a G20 video conference where the same points were highlighted. Maas described Afghanistan as "the most formidable challenge” facing the global community. The Taliban have already foregone one of the key requirements, that being an inclusive government. "This decision will make it more difficult to maintain contact with them.” All five permanent members of the UN Security Council reached a consensus urging the Taliban to be more inclusive in governance. The Security Council wants "a peaceful and stable Afghanistan where humanitarian aid can be distributed without problems and without discrimination," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. World powers seek "an Afghanistan where the rights of women and girls are respected, an Afghanistan that is not a sanctuary for terrorism, an Afghanistan with an inclusive government representing all sections of the population," he said. kb/aw (AFP, dpa) | 7Politics
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Ireland's health service said Friday it has shut down its IT systems after being targeted in a "significant ransomware attack." "We have taken the precaution of shutting down all our IT systems in order to protect them from this attack and to allow us [to] fully assess the situation with our own security partners," the Health Service Executive said on Twitter. The health regulator added that the move is a precaution, and appointments for coronavirus vaccination have not been affected. HSE Chief Executive Paul Reid told national broadcaster RTE that the attack was "very sophisticated" and was "impacting all of our national and local systems that would be involved in all of our core services." He said the incident was largely affecting information stored on central servers and not hospital equipment. However, Dublin's Rotunda maternity hospital said it was canceling most routine appointments due to the IT issues, calling the situation a "critical emergency." Ransomware attacks typically involve the infection of computers with malicious software, often downloaded by clicking on seemingly innocuous links in emails or other website pop-ups. Users are left locked out of their systems, with the demand of a ransom to be paid to restore computer functions. They differ from other types of hacking, which may steal large batches of customer data or other information from companies or individuals. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Another ransomware attack last Friday forced the shutdown of the United States' largest fuel pipeline network, leading to some panic buying at gasoline stations along the East Coast. The attack highlighted concerns about the vulnerability of critical infrastructure to hacking groups and criminals. Moscow has rejected US accusations that a Russia-based group was behind the cyber attack. mm/sms (AFP, AP, Reuters) | 5Health
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There is "no indication'' that AstraZeneca vaccines are the cause of blood clots reported in some shot recipients, the European Medicines Agency's (EMA) chief said on Tuesday. The regulatory agency responded after more than a dozen EU countries suspended the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine amid health concerns. The agency is "still firmly convinced that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing COVID-19 with its associated risk of hospitalization and death outweigh the risk of these side effects," Executive Director Emer Cooke added. Cooke said that an EMA evaluation of individual incidents is ongoing. It is expected to complete a full review on Thursday. There are fears about the safety of the vaccine in some countries after several cases of blood clots or brain hemorrhages in people after receiving the inoculation. A small number of deaths have been reported. The WHO, AstraZeneca, and the EMA have all insisted the AstraZeneca shot is safe, and that there is no link between the vaccine and reported blood clots. They say clots are not occurring in greater numbers or frequency than normally in the general population. The EU's largest three nations — Germany, Italy, and France — joined others in suspending the use of the vaccine on Monday. Sweden and Latvia followed suit on Tuesday. The news has dealt a blow to the global immunization campaign against coronavirus, which has now killed more than 2.6 million people. The vaccine was developed by British-Swedish firm AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford in England. More than 11 million doses have been administered in the UK, without any major problems reported. Cooke stressed that "trust in the safety and efficacy of these vaccines is paramount for us." She added it was the job of the agency to ensure the vaccines were safe. On speculation that incidents of blood clots were related to a specific vaccine batch, Cooke said it was "unlikely" but the EMA was not ruling it out. "We are looking at adverse events associated with all vaccines," Cooke said when asked if it was probing the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines as well, following reports of clotting with those jabs in the United States. A World Health Organization (WHO) committee of experts is also reviewing isolated cases of blood clots and low platelet counts in vaccinated individuals. kmm, rc/aw (AFP, Reuters, dpa, AP) | 5Health
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The voyage data recorder has been recovered from a fire-ravaged ship that is sinking off the coast of Sri Lanka, as experts try to determine what caused the fire. The recorder from the MV X-Press Pearl, also known as the black box, contains important information about the operation of the vessel. It will be handed over to local law enforcement agencies that are investigating the fire. The ship's aft portion remains on the seabed at a depth of about 21 meters (almost 70 feet), and the forward section continues to settle down slowly. The Singapore-registered vessel has been slowly sinking into the Indian Ocean since Wednesday, after a fire that lasted nearly two week. It was heading from Colombo to India's Gujarat state, carrying 25 tonnes of nitric acid, and plastic raw materials. Efforts to tow the ship away from the port of Colombo failed as the ship's stern was submerged in water, and rested on the seabed. The Sri Lankan navy, Indian coast guard, and salvage crews have been waiting on standby, as vast environmental implications including an oil spill are expected. An 80-kilometer (50-mile) stretch of the beach has been declared off limits for locals, and fishing has been banned in the area. Tons of microplastic granules from the ship swamped the beach area. Debris has washed ashore, as army personnel have been engaged in removing it from the beach. An oil spill could affect marine life, and pollute Sri Lanka's beaches even more. Officials said an acid leak from May 11 may be the cause of the disaster. They also said that ports in Qatar and India had refused to offload the nitric acid. A criminal investigation has been launched by local authorities. The government has said it will take action against the ship's owner. A group of environmentalists have sued the Sri Lankan government and the ship operator, for what they described as the "worst marine disaster" in the country's history. tg/rc (AFP, AP) | 6Nature and Environment
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Family members and friends paid their last respects on Sunday to British journalist Dom Phillips, who was murdered in the Amazon earlier this month along with Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira. Phillips' wife Alessandra Sampaio, siblings Sian and Gareth, and brother-in-law Paul Sherwood attended the 57-year-old's funeral in Niteroi near Rio de Janeiro. He was conducting research for a book on how to save the Amazon rainforest when he was murdered. "Dom will be cremated in the country he loved, Brazil, which he had chosen as home," Sampaio told reporters after his funeral at the Parque da Colina cemetery. "I would like to express my eternal gratitude to the Indigenous peoples, who are with us as loyal guardians of life, justice, and our forests," she added. She revealed the couple had been planning to adopt two children from Brazil. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Sampaio said the family would be paying close attention to the murder of her husband and his colleague, and thanked the Indigenous people who helped look for them. "He was killed because he tried to tell the world what was happening to the rainforest and its inhabitants," said Phillips' sister, Sian. Outside the cemetery, some people protested with signs reading "Who ordered to kill Dom and Bruno?" The disappearance of Phillips and Pereira on June 5 sparked an international outcry. Phillips, 57, and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, 41, were killed on their boat on the Itaquai River, near the entrance of the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory, which borders Peru and Colombia. Their remains were found in the jungle roughly 10 days later. Three fishermen from nearby communities were arrested. Two of them confessed to the murders, according to the police. Five others who helped hide the bodies have also been identified. Some activists have blamed the killings on President Jair Bolsonaro for allowing commercial exploitation of the Amazon at the cost of the environment and law and order. Phillips had written extensively about the Amazon rainforest, and was a contributor to The Guardian newspaper and other publications. Pereira was serving as his guide, and had previously traveled with him to the area in 2018. Pereira was a defender of Indigenous rights and had received multiple death threats. He was laid to rest Friday in his home state of Pernambuco, in northeastern Brazil. The service was attended by Indigenous people who paid their respects through traditional song and dance. tg/jsi (AFP, AP, Reuters) | 3Crime
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In what has become a recurring event in recent months, tens of thousands of protesting farmers in northern India blocked national highways on Saturday with parked trucks and tractors, or simply by sitting on the pavement. Blocking roads has become a favorite tactic in a monthslong protest movement, which shows no sign of stopping. Farmers have insisted that a new set of agricultural reforms will sink their livelihoods. "We want to send out a signal loud and clear. We will not tolerate the repressive measures unleashed by the government against farmers, including the discriminatory laws, the arrests of farmers and the internet shutdown," Darshan Pal, a protest leader, told DW. The blockades are being organized by an umbrella body of 40 farmers unions. Rakesh Tikait, leader of the Bharatiya Kisan union, told DW that Saturday's protests would not take place in the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, as well as the capital territory, Delhi. "They can be called to Delhi any time, so they are kept on standby," Tikait said, as protesters encountered police barricades on the main road into the Delhi neighborhood of Ghazipur, a major gathering point for protesters. Delhi was put on high alert Saturday, with police presence increased at border crossings and several metro stations closed. There have been no reports of violence thus far. "We are not taking any chances. We have also deployed drones to ensure there is no breach," a senior intelligence official told DW. "We would like to request that the people cooperate with farmers just for three hours, and let's do our protest peacefully," said Manjeet Singh Rai, president of Bharatiya Kisan farmers' union. In the state of Haryana, northwest of Delhi, protesters blocked the national highway near the Shahjahanpur border crossing to Rajasthan state. Similar scenes played out in Ludhiana, a city in the northern state of Punjab, and the city of Nashik in the western state of Maharashtra. The protests, which began in northern India's farm belt in autumn 2020, are centered on three agricultural reform laws pushed through by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government. Proponents have said the laws will reform and modernize outdated rules on the sale, storage and marketing of produce. However, small-scale farmers have said the laws will allow big agricultural corporations to squeeze them from the market. For over two months, thousands of farmers, mostly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, have been living in sprawling protest camps at three border points leading into Delhi — Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur. The protest movement, comprising men and women, young and old, regularly sit on highways braving the elements and blocking roads leading into the national capital. Farmers have said that over 140 of their ranks have died during the course of the protests from a range of causes, including suicide, road accidents and exposure to cold weather. Despite the months of road blockades and demonstrations, Modi's government has not met the farmers' demands and repealed the laws. A decision by India's Supreme Court to delay their implementation to allow more time for the opposing sides to work on a solution was not enough to appease the farmers. The stalemate between the farmers and the government has been one of the most significant policy challenges faced by Modi. Agriculture is the primary source of livelihood for about 58% of India's workforce, and farmers have been arguing for years to get the minimum guaranteed prices increased. Last week, the protest movement reached a fever pitch during Republic Day celebrations in Delhi. A tractor rally overshadowed a large military parade, and protests grew out of control as demonstrators clashed with police, stormed barricades and hoisted a farm union flag on the ramparts of Delhi's iconic Red Fort. Police cracked down after last weekend's unrest by suspending internet services in the areas where demonstrations were taking place, and fortifying main roads leading into the capital with nails and barbed wire. International attention following last week's upheaval in Delhi has put added pressure on Modi's government. Several international personalities, including singers and activists, have come out in support of the farmers. "Why aren't we talking about this?!" pop star Rihanna tweeted on Tuesday along with the hashtag #FarmersProtest, eliciting a flood of response from her fan base of over 100 million followers. The social media traction did not go over well with the Indian government. Shortly after the tweets went viral, India's Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling the comments "neither accurate nor responsible," and included the hashtags #IndiaTogether and #IndiaAgainstPropaganda. "Before rushing to comment on such matters, we would urge that the facts be ascertained, and a proper understanding of the issues at hand is undertaken," the statement said. The farmers' unions have vowed to continue the protests until the laws are completely repealed — a demand firmly rejected by the government which has instead offered to amend the laws. At the end of Saturday's three-hour blockade, angry yet determined farmers said they were prepared for the long haul. "Let us see who will blink. We will dig in our heels and fight until these discriminatory laws are scrapped," Banwari Lal, a farmer from Jind in Haryana, told DW. This message was amplified by union leader Tikait, who said farmers would give the government until October 2, Mahatma Gandhi's birthday, to fulfill their demands. "After that we will do further planning. We will not bow under pressure. What we have shown today should be an indication that nobody can beat us down," said Tikait. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video | 8Society
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"Why didn't your mother abort you?" a passerby shouted angrily at environmental protection activists who were blocking Berlin's busy Frankfurter Allee during a recent protest. This exchange illustrates the increasing divisions in Germany when it comes to the ever more conspicuous displays of civil disobedience employed by organizations such as Letzte Generation ("Last Generation"). A gap is growing between those who say they will fight for their future by any means within reason, and those who say that many such attention-grabbing tactics have crossed the line into criminality. "When crimes are committed and other people are endangered, every limit of legitimate protest is crossed," Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, of the Social Democrats (SPD), said on Monday. "All this has nothing whatsoever to do with democratic debate. The offenders must be prosecuted quickly and consistently." Faeser was referring to an incident last week in which Letzte Generation activists were blamed for blocking a street in the capital that first responders needed to use. The special operations vehicle took several minutes longer to get to an accident site. The bicyclist involved in the accident later died, with some suggesting the delay was responsible for the woman's death and others questioning whether it could be solely blamed on the activists' actions. This week, the Berlin emergency services released a statement in which it said that the traffic caused by the protest did cost the woman her life. Some politicians have spoken of the tragedy as a reason why laws should be changed to more severely punish such acts of civil disobedience. In comparison with the organized Fridays for Future marches, Letzte Generation has opted for highly visible demonstrations more likely to garner headlines. In 2022 alone, members have blocked dozens of large highways and thoroughfares across Germany, as well as major airport runways, vandalized the Economics Ministry building in protest of an energy deal with Qatar, and glued themselves to oil pipelines. They have also thrown food at famous artworks in museums in Munich, Frankfurt, Potsdam, and Berlin. Although the paintings were not damaged, as they were protected by thick glass and the activists were aware of that fact in advance, the latter actions in particular have stirred a heated debate in Germany about whether appearing to attack culture instead of polluters is a good way for activists to get their message across. Lena Herbers, an expert in protest movements at the University of Freiburg, told DW that more radical acts were being favored by demonstrators instead of sanctioned protest because decades of the latter had not brought about enough change to avert climate catastrophe. The changing nature of the protest movement highlights the urgency of their mission, Herbers said, adding that "activists are now trying to point out more forcefully the scientifically-recognized dramatic situation that requires rapid changes." The new forms of protest have been used for opposition politicians from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, as another reason why criminal penalties for civil disobedience should be increased. Bavarian state premier and CSU member Markus Söder announced that 12 Letzte Generation members, at least one of whom is a high school student, would have to sit for 30 days of pre-trial detention for blocking a Munich street — a charge that would usually allow suspects to await trial at home. But that is not enough, Söder said, adding that there must be punishment, "and punishment, that is, that must be, effective: No light monetary fines, but sometimes for example arrest and corresponding jail time." Lena Herbers said that the calls from conservative lawmakers were part of a "delegitimization strategy." "By not answering direct calls for a response from activists, and instead referring to 'criminal acts', politicians are making activists adjacent to criminals. In this way, their protest is no longer considered justified and lawmakers can avoid responding to the demands," said Herbers. The CDU/CSU in Berlin has echoed Söder's comments. Alexander Dobrindt, a CSU leader in the Bundestag, called Letzte Generation "climate anarchists" who deserve "significantly harsher penalties…to counter further radicalization." According to Herbers, it's important to remember that whether a protest is seen as illegal or illegitimate can change over time, as it did for civil rights demonstrations around the world. "Nonviolent but illegal resistance can also bring about great changes. In Germany, civil disobedience has emerged as a practice of social movements since the 1970s," she said, and has been successful in, for example, blocking NATO stationing more nuclear weapons inside the country. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The ruling coalition of the SPD, Green Party and business-friendly FDP has tried to sidestep the debate, criticizing activists but refusing to consider increased criminal penalties. FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai has said that the German justice system has "instruments enough" to deal with civil disobedience. And Sonja Eichwede, a SPD Bundestag spokesperson on legal policy matters, said that while she feared Letzte Generation would inspire copycats, she rejected the "populist call" for increased criminalization as unnecessary. Aside from these comments, the ruling coalition has avoided engaging in high-level talks with climate activists despite scientific consensus that global leaders need to take much more decisive action to avoid millions dying from climate change-induced extreme weather conditions in the coming decades. Mostly recently, Letzte Generation issued an ultimatum to the government: Engage in debate about more affordable public transport and introducing a speed limit on the autobahn — measures that researchers say are easy and common-sense ways to reduce emissions — or activists will rachet up their demonstrations. As to threats from lawmakers that the justice system will come down heavy on protests that break laws, the young people asking them to protect their future by increasingly outlandish means appear unbothered. Just in Berlin, state prosecutors said at the end of October, some 730 members of Letzte Generation have faced criminal charges or fines so far this year. "There is not a lack of information" available to policymakers, said Letzte Generation spokesperson Carla Hinrichs on Twitter, "but rather the courage to draw conclusions from it." While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing. | 7Politics
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German customs officials found opium with a street value of almost €400,000 ($435,696) while searching a car at an autobahn rest area near the western city of Bielefeld, they announced on Monday. The find dates back to January 6, with the announcement delayed to avoid compromising investigations, officials said. A 39-year-old Iranian man who had been driving the car was detained along with his 37-year-old female companion, according to a press statement from Bielefeld customs authorities. The officials found more than 28 kilograms (62 pounds) of raw opium and more than €30,000 in cash during the search at the Lipperland Süd rest area on the A2 autobahn. The altogether 45 packages of the substance were found in a travel bag in the rear leg space and in a silver suitcase in the trunk, the press statement said. "Taking such a large quantity of drugs from the street is not an everyday occurrence for us, so it's a big success," said Ralf Wagenfeld, a spokesman for the Bielefeld customs office. The matter will be followed up by narcotics investigators at the the customs investigations office in the capital, Berlin, the statement said. While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing. | 3Crime
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In early September, a Moscow court ruled that neither Google, nor its Russian equivalent Yandex, may show results for the search term "Umnoje golosowanije," or "vote smart" in Russian. The decision is the culmination of a lawsuit in which a sheep wool trader from southern Russia, who had patented the term, sought to protect the trademark. Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny created a platform with the exact same name — "vote smart" — to weaken the ruling United Russia party by promoting opposition parties and candidates. Its website went online on September 15, only to be blocked by the country's telecommunications agency. Activists involved with the project, however, say the "vote smart" app remains operational. The platform has proven a powerful tool in recent years. It helped opposition candidates win almost half of all single-mandate constituencies at the 2019 Moscow city elections. The city's leading United Russia candidate lost to a Communist. While opposition candidates have never had it easy in Russian elections, this year's vote could prove particularly challenging. Russia has classified Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) as 'extremist' and disbanded the organization since his imprisonment. This move has prevented Navalny supporters from participating in elections. Several of his allies have gone into exile. "The Kremlin sees Navalny as a real threat because he is able to mobilize voters through the internet," explains opposition lawmaker Vladimir Milov. Russia's few prominent opposition figures have either been banned from running in the upcoming election, or forced to flee abroad. Boris Vishnevsky of the Liberal Yabloko party has held a seat in St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly for years. He is now running for re-election against two near-identical doppelganger candidates, who happen to have the exact same name as him. Vitaly Averin of election monitoring group Golos — Russian for "voice" — says that "thousands" of opposition candidates have been barred from the September elections. He deems the upcoming vote "unfair." The balance of power in Russia's State Duma, the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, is unlikely to change. United Russia is expected to win the most votes out of all 14 parties competing in the election. The Communists, right-wing populist LDPR and left-wing nationalist A Just Russia party will most likely be re-elected into parliament as well. Yet nothing is set in stone. While the Communists are currently polling at around 20%, Vladimir Putin's United Russia party faces historically low approval ratings. At one point, state-owned polling firm VCIOM even recorded ratings dipping below 30%. It predicts United Russia will nevertheless take 42% of the vote — a drop of over ten percentage points compared with its 2016 result. In a bid to boost its appeal, the party is fielding popular Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu as its lead candidate — instead of party chairman and ex-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. This is the first time Medvedev is not leading the party candidates' list. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will also stand for election. The party expects strong support from voters in eastern Ukraine's Russian-backed separatist republics. Russian authorities say some 600,000 residents in these self-proclaimed republics have been granted Russian citizenship. They may now cast their vote in person, or online. Ahead of the poll, one-off payments were also made to pensioners and "siloviki" – members of the armed services and intelligence agencies. Opposition figures lambasted the payments as an attempt to bribe potential voters. Disaffection has been on the rise in recent years, chiefly due to the climbing costs of living. Nobody knows for sure, however, how many Russians have grown disillusioned. The Levada Center, an independent pollster, is banned from publishing survey findings on the matter ahead of the vote, as it has been designated a "foreign agent" – a label those affected reject. Opposition online news outlet Meduza and independent television channel Dozhd – Russian for "rain" – were recently designated "foreign agents," too. Internet censorship has increased tremendously. A Dozhd video was blocked on YouTube for featuring calls for Navalny's release. Some Russian media outlets are now speculating whether internet censorship will become the new normal like in China. Ella Pamfilov, who chairs the central election commission, has said media outlets classified as "foreign agents" are free to report what they want. There exists no body, however, to document potential breaches. Russia has said it would only permit 60 election observers into the country because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which had planned to send 500 observers, then called off the mission altogether. It is the first time since 1993 that the organization will not be monitoring a Russian election. Five election observers will, however, be sent from the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe. This article was originally written in German. | 7Politics
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"Never say never" would be appropriate way to describe such an extraordinary comeback. The Airbus A380, the world's biggest airliner with over 600 seats on board (in one specific Emirates airline configuration) had been written off by many observers and retired by numerous airlines at the height of the pandemic. But now, as airlines seek ways to cope with the sudden massive increase in demand and the delivery delays plaguing Boeing, the superjumbo returns and in much larger numbers than expected. In the last week of June, a total of 129 A380s were taking to the skies again globally, operated by seven airlines, according to tracking portal Flightradar24. That's more than half of the 251 long-haul aircraft ever delivered, with more being brought back into service every week. In a spectacular U-turn last week, German airline Lufthansa confirmed it too was bringing back some A380s for the 2023 summer season, a sign that a resurgence of the A380, unthinkable only months ago, was gaining traction. Passengers love the A380. But almost all of its operators have struggled to fly the giant aircraft economically, mostly due to its four engines, which consume astronomical levels of fuel as well as the many seats that need to be filled. The aircraft, of which Airbus had hoped to build at least a thousand, was a commercial flop. The carrier Emirates out of Dubai remains the A380's strongest backer and biggest customer by far. Emirates has 123 A380s, almost half of the entire amoount ever produced. The production of A380 ended last year, with Emirates receiving the last-ever A380 built at the Airbus factory in Hamburg, in December 2021. The era of the four-engine wide-body jet seemed to be over as US rival Boeing had already indicated it would end production of the legendary Boeing 747 in 2022 after over 50 years. Air France phased out its 10 Airbus A380s permanently even before the pandemic hit, some already having been dismantled. When the COVID-19 pandemic brought aviation almost to a standstill in spring of 2020, the end of most remaining A380s appeared unavoidable, with the exception of Emirates' fleet as the airline had already announced it would fly its double-deckers, complete with showers and an on-board lounge, until the mid-2030s. Lufthansa, which had a total of 14 A380s in its fleet, was among the airlines that pulled the plug on the superjumbo. It sent its entire fleet into retirement. As Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr stressed in August 2021, "the A380 is obviously not coming back." In April 2022, he reiterated that to Germany's Der Spiegel magazine: "This is over, once and for all. The A380 is too uneconomical compared with the newest twin-engine long-haul jets. It's not coming back at Lufthansa." Lufthansa's A380s are currently parked in Spain and France. Six of these aircraft have already been sold, eight A380s remain part of the Lufthansa fleet for the time being. Anyone who wants to see Lufthansa's superjumbos today should go to Lourdes in France, a major Catholic pilgrimage site. At the Tarbes-Lourdes airport, are several dozen of the jets, all in long-term storage, sitting against the picturesque backdrop of the snow-capped Pyrenees. Many of them came here brand new from the Airbus factory in nearby Toulouse, having never carried a passenger. From behind the thin wire fence it's possible to observe these dormant giants. Windows and engines are covered with silver foil, landing gear carefully wrapped, all openings in the fuselage closed up. This is called "deep storage" in aviation parlance. "It would take nine months to get our A380s up and running again," Lufthansa's Spohr told DW. Nonetheless, four to five of the eight remaining A380s at Lufthansa will be made airworthy again and will operate scheduled flights. "I had to soften my standpoint about the final end of the A380 a little bit," Spohr conceded in late June. Soaring passenger demand, already above pre-pandemic levels in some areas, is a big reason behind the U-turn on the A380. But it also has to do with problems at US manufacturer Boeing. Lufthansa was among the first customers of the biggest long-haul aircraft currently in production, the Boeing 777-9, which the German airline wants to operate with 400 seats. However, the delivery of the aircraft has been delayed by about five years, to 2025. "The delivery delays for the Boeing 777-9 are a big burden on our flight operations," Spohr said. So, as a stopgap measure, Lufthansa has decided to reintroduce the A380. Lufthansa would start operating its returning A380s from Munich in Spring 2023, said Spohr, adding that the number could rise if demand stayed strong. The main reason to base the superjumbos in Bavaria rather than at Lufthansa's Frankfurt hub is the lack of pilots. "We have only kept 14 A380 pilots ready to fly, who could be deployed straight away. So if we bring the A380 back into service, we would need to qualify some more A350 pilots," explained Spohr. Lufthansa's A350 fleet is also based in Munich, where some of its cockpit crew are due to do the six-week course that also enables them to fly the A380. Edited by: Ashutosh Pandey | 0Business
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson broke lockdown rules by having a birthday party with 30 people in attendance, broadcaster ITV reported Monday. The gathering is said to have been held in June 2020, during the first COVID lockdown in Britain. The new allegation comes just days before an official investigation by Cabinet Office official Sue Gray into other lockdown parties is due to be published later this week. Johnson's then-fiancee Carrie Symonds, who has since become the PM's wife, organised a surprise party for his 56th birthday on June 19 with up to 30 staff attending. The party is said to have lasted for around half an hour. Symonds had brought a cake for Johnson, and attendees sang happy birthday for him, said the report At the time, restrictions allowed for gatherings of only up to six people. Indoor gatherings were banned. Downing Street said that staff gathered briefly after a meeting and Johnson attended for less than 10 minutes. They denied a second allegation that he held a separate party that evening with family friends, saying he met a small number of family members outside. "A group of staff working in No. 10 that day gathered briefly in the Cabinet Room after a meeting to wish the prime minister a happy birthday. He was there for less than 10 minutes," said a statement from the prime minister's office. This is the latest accusation Johnson has faced for holding parties during lockdown. Two weeks ago, he apologized in Parliament for a "bring your own booze" garden party that took place at Downing Street on May 20, 2020. He said he had believed the party was a work event. It was later reported that Downing Street staff had also held two separate gatherings on the eve of the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II's husband Prince Philip. The accusation comes as Johnson struggles to retain his credibility as leader of the country and among his Conservative party. tg/rt (AFP, Reuters) | 5Health
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French motorcycle rider Pierre Cherpin died five days after crashing during the seventh stage of the Dakar Rally, organizers said on Friday. Cherpin, 52, was taking part in his fourth Dakar rally and underwent neurosurgery after he crashed at 178 kilometers (110 miles) per hour on Sunday.. He was placed in a medically-induced coma in a hospital in Saudi Arabia before being flown to Lille, northern France. "During his transfer by medical plane from Jeddah to France, Pierre Cherpin died from the injuries caused by his fall," organizers said. His death is the first of the 2021 Dakar Rally, an annual off-road endurance event where competitors use vehicles including bikes, quads, cars and trucks. Portugal's Paulo Goncalves and Dutch motorcyclist Edwin Straver both died following accidents in last year's event. Cherpin's passing overshadowed the victory of French veteran Stephane Peterhansel, who picked up a record-extending 14th Dakar Rally victory. The 55-year-old X-Raid Mini driver, nicknamed "Mr Dakar" for his unprecedented success, first won the endurance event on a motorcycle in 1991. The Frenchman aided by co-pilot Edouard Boulanger, finished ahead of Qatari Nasser al-Attiyah (Toyota), with Spain's Carlos Sainz rounding out the podium in another Mini. Argentine Kevin Benavides, riding a Honda, won the motorcycle category after the 12th and final stage that ended in Jeddah. The event started in 1978 as a race from Paris to the Senegalese capital, Dakar. It moved from Africa for safety reasons in 2009. It is now held entirely in Saudi Arabia after a stint in South America. jf/rt (AFP, Reuters) | 9Sports
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Japan and India kicked off their first joint military exercise involving combat aircraft on Monday, Japan's Defense Ministry said. The drills come as the so-called Quad Group — comprised of the United States, Japan, India and Australia — have grown increasingly concerned about China's military and economic influence in the region. The joint exercise will last for 11 days and is taking place at the Hyakuri Air Base in Japan's Ibaraki prefecture, northeast of Tokyo. Eight Japanese fighter jets are involved while India has sent four war planes of its own, as well as two transport aircraft and a refueling tanker, according to Japan's Defense Ministry. Some 150 Indian Air Force personnel are taking part in the exercise. India's Defense Ministry said the drills will include training for "air combat missions in a complex environment" and that the exercise will strengthen the "long-standing bond of friendship" between India and Japan, the Japan Times reported. The exercises were first agreed by the two countries in 2019, but were delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The two countries previously held joint exercises with their land and sea forces, but the current exercise is the first to involve fighter jets. According to Japan's Defense Ministry, India is now the fifth country with which Japan has held a bilateral military exercise, following the US, Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany. Members of the "Quad" have been stepping up defense and economic cooperation amid worries over China's efforts to expand its influence in the Indo-Pacific region. Japan in particular has been vocal about its concerns with Beijing. In December, the Japanese government called China the "greatest strategic challenge ever" to Japan's security. Last week, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's government signed a new defense deal with the UK and agreed to expand the country's defense treaty with the US. rs/ar (AFP, dpa) | 7Politics
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Ecuadorian police on Tuesday said at least 62 people had been killed in prison mutinies in three separate facilities. News of the violence comes as Ecuador struggles to deal with prison overcrowding and frequent violence between gangs. The unrest happened at facilities in the port city of Guayaquil in the southwest, and at Cuenca and Latacunga in the Andes. Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno wrote on Twitter that criminal organizations were behind the violence. "The police and Interior Ministry are working to regain control of the prisons," Moreno wrote. Meanwhile, Interior Minister Patricio Pazmino tweeted that a centralized command post was now investigating "concerted action by criminal organizations to generate violence in penitentiary centers." Police who brought the situation under control in Guayaquil seized firearms, machetes, knives, and mobile phones from prisoners' cells, according to the prosecutor's office. Riots sparked by gang rivalry in Ecuadorean jails left 11 prisoners dead in December. A 90-day state of emergency that Moreno ordered in the jails to bring "mafia" groups under control was lifted in November. Inmate violence left 51 people dead in 2020, according to police figures. To reduce prisoner numbers amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Ecuadorean government commuted sentences for minor offenses to non-custodial penalties. rc/rs (dpa, AFP, Reuters) | 8Society
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A seminal memoir of the Holocaust and its aftermath has been banned by a Tennessee school district over accusations it contains "swear words" and depictions of nudity. "Maus" author and artist Art Spiegelman told US broadcaster CNBC on Wednesday that he was "baffled" by the decision, and called the Republican-controlled state of Tennessee "demented." "There’s something going on very, very haywire there" said Spiegelman, 73, who learned of the January 10 decision the day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Published in installments in the 1970s and 80s, "Maus" is considered the first great American graphic novel. It tells the story of Spiegelman's parents, Polish Jews who survived Nazi concentration camps, as well as the artist's own reflections on being the son of Holocaust survivors. The title is derived from Spiegelman's depictions of the Jews as anthropomorphic mice and the Nazis as cats. It is the recipient of many prestigious trophies, including being the only graphic novel to ever win the Pultizer Prize, as well as earning Eisner and Harvey awards. "Maus" was being used as part of a language arts curriculum for the eighth grade when it caught the attention of McMinn County School Board. The board voted unanimously to remove it due to "rough, objectionable language" and "nakedness." There are a total of eight swear words in the book and depictions of naked mice. The board also objected to representations of Spiegelman's mother shortly before she killed herself when he was 20 years old. "It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids, why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff, it is not wise or healthy," said school board member Tony Allmann. The board considered blacking out the words and images in question, but worried that could violate the book's copyright. Defending the use of the book, local assistant principal Jane Goodin reminded the board that "there is nothing pretty about the Holocaust and for me this was a great way to depict a horrific time in history." Spiegelman said the decision was "Orwellian," while fellow graphic novelist Neil Gaiman wrote on Twitter that "there's only one kind of people who would vote to ban Maus." The move came as schools in Republican-controlled areas across the US are grabbing headlines for censorship of books that local officials and parents find objectionable. For example, in Texas a graphic novel was banned after parents complained it was teaching children critical race theory. "New Kid" by Jerry Craft tells the story of a young Black boy who moves to a new town and struggles to fit in at school. Craft has expressed his confusion at his story for children being conflated with an advanced academic topic typically studied at the PhD level. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video | 4Culture
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Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said on Saturday that authorities must "deal decisively" with the protests that broke out across the country following the death of a young Kurdish woman in police detention. The country has seen some of its biggest protests in years. They originally broke out last week at the funeral of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini who protesters believe was killed by Iran's morality police who enforce hijab rules on women's dress. Raisi said on Saturday that Iran must "deal decisively with those who oppose the country's security and tranquility." He was quoted by the state-run news agency IRNA while he was on a call with the family of a member of a voluntary Basij unit who was allegedly killed by protesters. Returning from the UN Assembly in New York, Raisi said that "normal" protests should be permitted but that "riots" could not be allowed. The recent protests have been largely led by women, although with significant support from some men. They accuse the morality police of using violence against Amini, who was arrested on September 13 for violating the country's strict Islamic dress code. The government responded to the protests by hundreds of thousands of people across multiple cities by severely limiting internet connectivity and organizing their own pro-government marches. Despite the internet blackout, videos of protests have made their way onto social media, with several showing burning barricades in the street, or young women demonstrably walking around without wearing a headscarf. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Iran has claimed that the protests are orchestrated by foreign enemies and Iranian exile groups. Official sources have said that 35 people have been killed in the protests, but activists say the number is at least 50. The last major outbreak of protests in 2019 was met with a severe government crackdown in which roughly 1,500 people were killed. Iranian news reported on Saturday that alone in the northern province of Gilani, 739 protesters had been arrested. Authorities further antagonized protesters on Saturday by claiming that Amini had not been killed by the morality police. Interior Minister Ahmad Wahidi said that the autopsy had provided no evidence that the police were to blame. "The medical examinations and those of the forensic department show that there was neither beating nor a fractured skull," state media quoted him as saying. Amini's father rejected the claims made by Wahidi saying that she had not had any heart problems and so could not have died from heart failure as police reported. ab/msh (Reuters, AFP, dpa, EFE) | 8Society
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Britain's first flight to take asylum seekers to Rwanda did not take off as planned after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issued last-minute injunctions to stop the deportations. More than 30 migrants were originally ordered to be sent to Rwanda after two British courts on Monday refused to block the deportation flights. The courts rejected last-ditch appeals filed by immigration rights advocates and labor unions. According to British media, 23 asylum-seekers have since had their deportations put on hold due to individual appeals. That left just a handful of migrants set to be deported, until the ECHR stepped in. London and Kigali signed an agreement in April that would send people seeking asylum in the UK to the East African country. Authorities in Rwanda will process the asylum claims and, if successful, refugees will be allowed to stay in that country. The UK will help cover up to $157 million (€144 million) of expenses. The UK is expected to pay more money as Rwanda accepts more migrants. The deal has sparked accusations that the deal allows the two countries to engage in human trafficking. But both the UK and Rwanda argue that trafficking is precisely what the pact aims to fight. "We're doing this for the right reasons," Yolande Makola, Rwanda's government spokeswoman, said during a press conference held in the capital on Tuesday. "We understand that there might be opposition to this, but we are asking that this program be given a chance because it's a solution," she said, adding that the [global] asylum system was broken. "People are risking their lives in these dangerous crossings. So something has to give." The Rwandan government says it will house the asylum-seekers in hostels in and around the capital Kigali, indicating that it is not expecting the arrival of huge numbers. Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director for Human Rights Watch, said he was not worried about Rwanda's capacity to receive the refugees. "The question is: Is Rwanda a country that respects human, civil and political rights? For us, the answer is no," he told DW. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Human rights groups have accused Rwanda's government of cracking down on perceived dissent, jailing critics, and pursuing repressive policies. The government denies the allegations. "The primary purpose of this partnership is to provide legal status for people who live in this country," Doris Uwicyeza, chief technical advisor at Rwanda's ministry of justice, told reporters on Tuesday. She added that once the migrants attain legal status, they will have the opportunity to apply for Rwandan citizenship, provided they fulfill the criteria for doing so. "There is a clear path which will be communicated to them on how to become Rwandans." "Rwandans are known for their hospitality. But the government of Rwanda does not respect human rights," Victoire Ingabire, leader of the Rwandan opposition movement, DALFA Umurinzi, which the authorities have so far refused to register as a party, told DW. Moreover, the Rwandan government's assertion that it wishes to reintegrate African migrants in Rwanda has been met with skepticism. "If it [the migrant deal] is being done on humanitarian grounds, then it is a big deal," Charles Ndushabandi, a Kigali resident, told DW. "The problem comes when the government is doing it for its political interests." Rwandan journalist John Gahamanyi said given the country's difficult history — an estimated 800,000 people were killed during the 1994 Rwandan genocide against Tutsi that forced hundreds of thousands to flee to neighboring countries — it is good for the government to help people in similar conditions that many Rwandans experienced before. "It is also a sign of empathy," Gahamanyi told DW. "But if people don't want to come, there is no reason why the government should force them to live in places where they are not comfortable," he added. "The first reason they left their countries is that they had problems there, so it's also good to respect their decisions." Rwandan political analyst Gonza Muganwa pointed out that since there is a lot of money involved, the agreement will naturally "interest many people." But that is not all. "The government is not saying so, but it seems obvious that it is looking for an alliance with the [British] conservative party and Britain in general," he told DW. In Denmark, the right-leaning government is also seeking an agreement with Kigali on the relocation of refugees. Victoire Ingabire does not believe President Paul Kagame's claim that he wants to give refugees a chance to build a new life for themselves either. She said the head of state should be more concerned about eradicating poverty in the country first. "As for these asylum-seekers, they will have no future in Rwanda, as the country is still rebuilding itself," she told DW. Faisal, a 20-year-old Ethiopian, who has lived in the so-called transit center of Gashora ever since being relocated from Libya in 2019, agrees with Ingabire. ''I pray daily to God that I leave this place,'' he said, adding that he ''had nothing to do'' except playing football and drinking. According to the government, Rwanda hosts more than 130,000 refugees and migrants from African nations and other countries such as Pakistan. Last year, Kigali, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR and the African Union extended a deal to relocate asylum-seekers in Libya to the East African country. Hundreds of people previously sent to Rwanda have since been resettled in third countries, according to the UNHCR. Kelly Nimubona, a refugee who crossed the frontier directly from neighboring Burundi, said there was no way to survive in Rwanda without a job: ''We cannot afford to eat twice a day.'' At the same time, there was no chance of getting work, he said. According to the National Institute of Statistics, the youth unemployment rate was nearly 24% by the end of 2021. Alex Ngarambe and Konstanze Fischer contributed to this report.
Edited by: Chrispin Mwakideu | 7Politics
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Egypt's military said at least 11 troops were killed in a militant attack on Saturday in the restive northern part of the Sinai Peninsula. The military said in a statement that the militants attacked a water pumping station east of the Suez Canal. Clashes ensued following the initial onslaught, which resulted in the deaths of one officer and 10 soldiers, spokesman Colonel Ghareeb Abdul Hafez said on the military's Facebook page. Five others were wounded, according to the official. "Hunt is under way for the terrorist elements," he said. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi mourned the death of the troops, vowing in a Facebook post to continue fighting the militants and "uprooting terrorism." No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Last week, suspected extremists blew up a natural gas pipeline in the Northern Sinai town of Bir al-Abd. Officials said the suspected militants planted explosives under the pipeline, causing a blaze to break out, but no casualties were reported. Egypt had witnessed a sharp increase in militant attacks, mainly in Sinai, since 2013, when the military overthrew President Mohammed Morsi. The former president died after collapsing in court in 2019. Hundreds of Egyptian security personnel have since perished in attacks, mostly claimed by an affiliate of the Islamic State. But since 2018, the pace of militant attacks in Sinai's main theater of operations and elsewhere has slowed to a trickle as the military launched a massive operation. Information about the fight against militants in the largely desert peninsula has been limited to official statements from the Egyptian government, which barred journalists, non-residents and outside observers from the area. The conflict has also been kept at a distance from tourist resorts at the southern end of Sinai. jsi/fb (AP, dpa) | 2Conflicts
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One of India's top stand-up comedians, Vir Das, recently delivered a monologue called "Two Indias" while performing in Washington DC, in which he shared his thoughts about the South Asian nation's social issues. During the show, Das described India as a country of paradoxes where people "worship women during the day but gang rape them at night." The show drew sharp criticism and even resulted in legal cases against the comic. Critics have accused him of defaming India. Aditya Jha, a spokesperson for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), filed a police complaint against Das for "insulting the country." "These derogatory statements against women and India are inflammatory. They were made in the US and malign the image of our country internationally. I want police to conduct an investigation," Jha was quoted as saying by local media. Amid the backlash, Das issued a statement saying his intention was to remind that India, despite its issues, was "great." "The video is a satire about the duality of two very separate Indias that do different things. Like any nation, it has light and dark, good and evil within it. None of this is a secret. The video appeals for us to never forget that we are great. To never stop focusing on what makes us great," his statement read. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Das isn't the first Indian stand-up comedian who has come under fire for sharing thoughts on social issues and taking political swipes at those in power. Many have had run-ins with authorities for simply being daring enough to directly mock the current political establishment. In January, Munawar Faruqui, a Muslim comedian, was arrested and detained for almost a month in central Madhya Pradesh state based on a complaint filed by the son of a local BJP politician, who alleged that the comedian was going to make objectionable statements about Hindu deities. Faruqui was detained before the show began and the police later admitted there was no evidence he had insulted Hindu deities. Still, right-wing Hindu groups have repeatedly targeted him since then and forced the cancellation of his shows, including a recent one in Goa, where 500 people threatened to set themselves on fire if he was allowed to go on stage. In July 2020, comedian Agrima Joshua was threatened with legal action and even faced rape threats after a video showing her joking about a statue project by the Maharashtra state government went viral on social media. At a time when large sections of the mainstream media are accused of kowtowing to those holding political power, a handful of stand-up comedians are attempting to speak truth to power. But they increasingly end up facing legal action. "With every passing year I feel laughter is costing comedians more and more. It's costing them their spontaneity and it's costing them their impulse. I have even heard some comedians telling jokes to their lawyers and showing their videos to a legal team before they release them online," comedian Kunal Kamra told DW. Last November, India's Supreme Court initiated contempt of court proceedings against Kamra over his tweets against judges and the judiciary. In response, the comedian told the court that the "tweets were not published with intention of diminishing people's faith in the highest court of our democracy" and that "the suggestion that my tweets could shake the foundations of the most powerful court in the world is an overestimation of my abilities." To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Vasu Primlani, India's first openly gay comic, wears many caps — as an environmentalist, a somatic therapist, triathlete and a baker. She isn't apprehensive of taking up issues like homophobia, gender and sexuality in her stand-up routine, and most of it is done in her trademark deadpan delivery. "Political statements in India are censured at best, and dissent is criminalized. You will remember I was jailed in 2014," Primlani told DW. In her shows, she uses humor to address the twin challenges of being gay and a woman in India, where homosexuality was only decriminalized in 2018. Similarly, Sanjay Rajoura, known for his razor-sharp wit, believes the situation for stand-up comedians has worsened over the past few years. "The 'national arrogance' has now not even spared a comedian who is performing outside India. This in itself is a joke. The thing that has changed drastically is the legitimacy this intolerance is gaining within the confines of our homes and that is the most disappointing part," Rajoura told DW. In the United States, which has a long tradition of political comedy, former President Donald Trump was a boon to late-night talk shows. During his tenure, the likes of John Oliver, Stephen Colbert and others hit home more sharply than the erudite editorials in the morning papers and TV channels. Neeti Palta, a female stand-up comedian, said political humor is generally not taken lightly in India, especially by supporters of political parties and state authorities. "You know what does it take to be a stand-up comedian? Quick wit, quicker legs and a lawyer on speed dial. India, the land of agriculture, is now becoming the land of aggro-culture where dissent is usually expressed by trashing a property or thrashing a person," Palta told DW. Indian comedians are still looking for wider acceptance. But in the last few years, it has become increasingly difficult for them to practice their trade, especially under the current political dispensation. "A zen master once said that when you're laughing you can never be in the past or the future, that immense beauty of laughter is being penalized and criminalized," said Kamra. Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru | 8Society
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A fire broke out at a gunpowder factory in Russia on Friday, leaving at least 16 people dead. One employee was taken to hospital with serious injuries after the accident and died there, investigators said. Russia's emergencies ministry published footage of smoke and debris at the severely damaged factory building. The fire is thought to have started in a powder workshop at the FGUP "Elastik" plant. A source of the Interfax news agency said there had been various explanations put forward, but that the main one was a "violation of technological processes" when it came to the handling of flammable substances. Some 170 emergency service personnel were attending the scene, officials said, with some 50 pieces of fire-fighting equipment deployed. The ministry said there was no threat to the general population living nearby. The plant is in the village of Lesnoye, around 300 kilometers (180 miles) from Moscow. The firm's website says it produces industrial explosives. rc/aw (Interfax, RIA) | 1Catastrophe
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Immediately after the first air raids by Russian bombers on Ukrainian territory on February 24, Ukrainians started showing up in large numbers to register for military service. Within days, the first in line had already been fully mobilized. At the same time, territorial defense units were being established in towns and cities. Even men and women who had no combat experience or even basic military training took up arms. "Tornado," 35 — who doesn't want to give his real name for security reasons — is a fighter with a Kyiv territorial defense brigade. In 2014, before the fighting in Donbas, he moved from Luhansk to Kyiv, where he established a successful furniture sales business. But on February 24, when the first Russian bombs shook the Ukrainian capital, he volunteered to join the Territorial Defense Forces. "I'm furious that some aliens are trying to enslave me. I am not a slave, I'm a free man!" he said. "I had no choice but to stockpile food for my wife, my son and our pets, pick up a machine gun, and crush the invaders." It was only when he was deployed to his post that experienced fighters taught him how to shoot. "In the beginning, it was chaotic. We had to stay outside night and day, sleeping on concrete. Men who had combat experience shared preserved food with the inexperienced ones, like me. They taught us how to shoot, dig trenches, and organize the defense," said Tornado. The skin on his face and body started peeling off in the freezing temperatures; it cracked particularly badly on his hands, which still haven't healed. The lack of washing facilities is also a problem. Seven men in his unit couldn't take it; they left, but Tornado stayed. Right now, he is guarding a "strategic facility," and can sleep in a heated room. Other fighters and volunteers are providing him with food. "The Ukrainian army only gave us sleeping bags and thermal underwear. It's all very good quality. But it wasn't until March 3 that we got military uniforms; before that, we were in civilian clothing. Now we also have a doctor, lots of medicines, supplies of socks and other things. But we still need ballistic eyewear, gloves, bulletproof vests and helmets," he said. Before war broke out, 40-year-old Oleksandr Kolot worked for an IT company. He was woken by the sound of explosions in the morning of February 24, and went to report for military service the same day, but the office was closed. From the men gathered there, he heard that Russian troops were expected to break through in Obolon, a suburb in the north of Kyiv. He also heard that authorities would be distributing weapons to residents of the capital there on the street — but he didn't get one, as there weren't enough. Then he saw some men in civilian clothes who were building a barricade, and joined them. He spent the whole of that night digging trenches and then stayed on with them, which was how he became part of the Territorial Defense Forces. "At first we were on our own," explained Kolot. "Then we were joined by men who already had a contract with the Territorial Defense Forces. The rest of us were able to sign a contract two weeks later, when we got a commander who was connected to the army." He said that, unlike the Ukrainian army soldiers, the Territorial Defense volunteers are not paid and are free to resign at any time. "In the beginning, it was hard to get used to only being able to sleep when the chance arose, not when you wanted to. I've got used to it," said Kolot. He now has a Ukrainian army uniform, but he sourced and paid for his own bulletproof vest. He really appreciates the help provided by civilians who have stayed in Kyiv. They bring tea and coffee for the men of the Territorial Defense Forces. Volunteers have also set up a field kitchen to feed the soldiers. "In my unit, most of the lads who have combat experience and have already fought the Russians are from Donbas. Some are from Kherson, a few from Odesa," he said. "There are some political differences of opinion, but we don't pay any attention to that now. We're all like brothers here." The most dangerous emplacements in Kyiv are those in the northwestern suburbs of Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin, where there is fierce fighting. "Everyone is on the front line — soldiers, national guard, border guards, Territorial Defense, police, Ukrainian security services, secret service agents, volunteer battalions," said 62-year-old Yuriy Kulachek, a reserve major in the border service. "There are young people who have only ever seen a machine gun in defense class at school. They're preparing to go into battle alongside experienced fighters." Before the war, Kulachek had a company that dealt with the extraction of granite. He defended Ukraine in Donbas for two years, then retired. After the events of February 24 he returned to his unit, and is now defending the suburbs of Kyiv near the freeway that heads west to Zhytomyr. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video "The unarmed civilians taking to the streets to protest against the invaders in Kherson, Melitopol and Berdyansk give us strength," he said. "We're also spurred on by the bravery of the refugees from occupied Hostomel. And civilians see us setting an example in fighting the Russians. This way we all give each other so much strength and energy, it's incredible." Kulachek added that all the colleagues who, like him, retired from military service back in 2016 are now back on the front line, regardless of age — proof, he said, of the defenders' great fighting spirit. This article was originally written in Russian. | 2Conflicts
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Hundreds of Ugandan soldiers in armored vehicles crossed the border into the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Wednesday, witnesses said, as part of a joint operation with Kinshasa. Congo has said special forces from both countries are being deployed to secure bases used by the Islamist-affiliated Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) militia. The Ugandan military started its deployments into Congo on Tuesday, having already launched air and artillery strikes against ADF targets from Ugandan territory. "They are arriving aboard armor-plated cars, with escorts from members of the local security services," Tony Kitambala, a freelance journalist based in North Kivu province, was cited as saying by the AFP news agency. Another witness, a resident of the border town of Nobili, reported seeing tanks. The pre-incursion bombardments were aimed at several ADF positions in North Kivu, as well as in the neighboring Ituri province to the northeast. The Ugandan armed forces said the raids had successfully hit their targets, with ground operations to follow that would hunt down "terrorists." A Congolese military spokesman said "search and control" operations were underway at the bombarded ADF locations. According to one DRV military officer, Congolese troops were headed towards Beni, the capital of North Kivu province, from neighboring South Kivu. Congo has promised that a situation report on the mission will be made public. There was no initial official indication of how many troops had been deployed or how long the operations will continue. Historically, the ADF is a Ugandan rebel coalition. It was mostly comprised of Muslims opposed to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who has led the country since 1986. The ADF has been active since the mid-1990s and was pushed out of Uganda after trying to mobilize support. It became embedded in places such as North Kivu in Congo and engaged with other armed groups. The group came to be treated as one of the deadliest among scores operating in eastern Congo. The group has operated alongside fighters from groups supportive of the former regimes of Milton Obote and Idi Amin, who felt sidelined by Museveni's politics. ADF members have also been linked to rebels engaged in a drawn-out fight for greater independence for communities on the borders between Uganda and Congo. According to Congo's Catholic Church, the ADF has killed some 6,000 civilians since 2013. Another monitor, the Kivu Security Tracker, blames the group for 1,200 deaths since 2017. While the ADF pledged allegiance to the so-called "Islamic State" (IS) in 2019, United Nations researchers say they have found no evidence of IS command and control. However, some ADF attacks in eastern DR Congo have been claimed by IS since April 2019. And in March this year, the United States placed the ADF on its list of "terrorist" organizations linked to IS. Ugandan authorities accused the ADF — or a local affiliated group — of carrying out or planning a string of attacks this year. Four people were killed and 33 wounded in twin suicide bombings in Kampala in November, with police linking this to the ADF. rc/sms (AFP, Reuters, AP) | 2Conflicts
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To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video A fire has ripped through a container depot in southeastern Bangladesh, killing at least 49 people and injuring more than 200 others, officials said on Sunday. The fire broke out at the BM Inland Container Depot in Sitakunda, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Bangladesh’s key port of Chittagong. While the cause of the blaze was not immediately clear, locals reported that there had been explosions in a container full of chemicals that shattered the windows of nearby houses. Main Uddin, the director-general of the Bangladesh fire service and civil defense, said at least five firefighters were among the dead, and at least 15 were being treated for burn injuries. After the initial blast shortly before midnight, there were multiple explosions that caused the fire to spread across the depot. Firefighters were still working to bring the fire under control and explosives experts from Bangladesh's military were called in to assist. Firefighting official Anisur Rahman said the effort was exacerbated due to small-scale chemical explosions triggered by the fire spreading throughout the depot. Many of the casualties were taken to Chattogram Medical College Hospital for treatment. Chittagong civil surgeon Mohammed Elias Hossain said the death toll could rise as some of the injured are in a critical condition, and made an appeal for emergency blood donations. A call for help also went out to all doctors in the region to help deal with the situation. Mominur Rahman, the chief administrator of the Chittagong district, said that while the fire was largely under control, there remained "several pockets of fire in the depot." Bangladesh is a key clothing supplier to several Western retailers and the affected depot contained millions of dollars of garment products waiting to be exported. However, these industrial disasters have placed Dhaka under the spotlight with monitoring groups blaming corruption and lax enforcement for deadly incidents over the years. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video In 2012, at least 117 workers died when they were trapped behind locked exits in a garment factory in Dhaka. The next year, the Rana Plaza garment factory outside Dhaka collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people. In 2019, a fire ripped through the oldest part of Dhaka and killed at least 67 people. Last year, a fire at a food and beverage facility outside the capital killed at least 52 people. Many of the victims were trapped inside because of an illegally locked door. see/kb (Reuters, AFP, AP) | 1Catastrophe
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