Current Final

Author: AFP

  • All cargo offloaded from first aid ship to reach Gaza: NGO

    All cargo offloaded from first aid ship to reach Gaza: NGO

    A US charity said Saturday its team in Gaza Strip had finished unloading the first maritime aid shipment to reach the besieged territory.

    “All cargo was offloaded and is being readied for distribution in Gaza,” World Central Kitchen said in a statement, noting that the aid was “almost 200 tonnes of food”.

    The group is preparing a second boat of 240 tonnes of food to set sail from Cyprus, the starting point of a new maritime aid route across the eastern Mediterranean.

    The humanitarian effort is intended to mitigate food shortages that have prompted UN famine warnings in Gaza from the United Nations and aid workers.

    “That shipment includes pallets of canned goods and bulk product including beans, carrots, canned tuna, chickpeas, canned corn, parboiled rice, flour, oil and salt,” World Central Kitchen said.

    The second shipment would also include a forklift and a crane to assist with deliveries, it added.

    The humanitarian group said it had “no information to release on when our second boat and the crew ship will be able to embark.”

    The Israeli military on Friday confirmed the first vessel, operated by the Spanish charity Open Arms, had arrived and said soldiers had been deployed to secure the area and conduct a security inspection.

    The military also said the delivery of humanitarian aid by sea did not constitute a breach of its years-long maritime blockade of Gaza, which has been ruled since 2007 by Hamas.

    World Central Kitchen had to build a jetty southwest of Gaza City to deliver the aid.

    Israel has killed at least 31,490 people in Gaza since October 7, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

    As cumbersome Israeli security checks and logistical hurdles slow overland aid delivery to Gaza, countries have pursued alternatives including airdrops and the new maritime corridor.

    Jose Andres, founder of World Central Kitchen, said on social media platform X on Friday that the first shipment was “a test” and that “we could bring thousands of tonnes each week.”

  • Squid Game star found guilty of sexual misconduct

    Squid Game star found guilty of sexual misconduct

    South Korea’s Squid Game actor O Yeong-su has been found guilty of sexual misconduct, a local court said Friday, after he was charged with assaulting a woman in 2017.

    The 79-year-old in 2022 became the first South Korean to win a Golden Globe Award for best supporting actor in a series for his performance as a seemingly vulnerable old man in the mega-hit Netflix dystopian thriller.

    The actor was sentenced to eight months in prison, suspended for two years, the Seongnam Branch of the Suwon District Court told AFP.

    He has been also ordered to complete 40 hours of classes on sexual violence, the court added.

    The victim’s own records of the assault and her claims are “consistent … and appear to be statements that cannot be made without actually experiencing them,” judge Jeong Yeon-ju said, according to the court.

    O was indicted in 2022 without detention on charges of sexually assaulting a woman, who has not been identified, on two occasions.

    The incidents took place when O was staying in a rural area for a theatre performance in 2017, on a walking path and in front of the victim’s residence, respectively, according to the Suwon District Court. Squid Game, a series that depicts a dark world where marginalised individuals are forced to compete in deadly versions of traditional children’s games, quickly gained immense popularity on 
    Netflix.

    Within less than four weeks of its release in 2021, it attracted a staggering 111 million viewers.

    The show’s success has amplified South Korea’s increasingly outsized influence on global popular culture, following global fame won by the likes of K-pop band BTS and the Oscar-winning film Parasite.

    Multiple figures in South Korea’s film industry — including late filmmaker Kim Ki-duk and actor Cho Jae-hyun — have faced sexual assault allegations.

  • Hamas Proposes New Six-week Gaza Truce, Hostage-prisoner Exchange: Official

    Hamas Proposes New Six-week Gaza Truce, Hostage-prisoner Exchange: Official

    Hamas has proposed a new six-week truce in Gaza and an exchange of several dozen Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, an official from the militant group told AFP on Friday.

    “The agreement is for a six-week ceasefire and a prisoner exchange,” the official said after weeks of so far fruitless mediation efforts, adding that the group would want this to lead to “a complete (Israeli) withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a permanent ceasefire”.

    During the proposed truce, Gaza militants would release about 42 hostages seized during the October 7 attack that triggered the war in Gaza, the official said, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.

    The official said that between 20 and 50 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails would be released per hostage — down from a previous proposal of a roughly 100-to-one ratio, according to a Hamas source in late February.

    Under the new proposal, the initial exchange could include women, children, elderly and ill hostages, the official said.

    During the October 7 attack, militants seized about 250 Israeli and foreign hostages, dozens of whom were released during a week-long truce in November. Israel believes about 130 captives remain in Gaza including 32 presumed dead.

    The latest proposal appears to be a shift for Hamas, whose armed wing said earlier this month there would be “no compromise” on its demand that Israel withdraw from Gaza before any more hostages are freed.

    Now the militants are saying that, during a six-week truce, Israeli forces would need to withdraw from “all cities and populated areas in the Gaza Strip” and allow for the return of displaced Gazans “without restrictions”, the official said.

    The Hamas proposal also calls to ramp up the flow of humanitarian aid, the official added.

    The terms of an eventual ceasefire would see Israel’s “complete military withdrawal from the Gaza Strip” and a comprehensive hostage-for-prisoner exchange involving the release of all hostages for “an agreed-upon number of Palestinian prisoners”, according to the official.

    “Egypt and Qatar, along with the United States, are responsible for following up and ensuring the implementation of the agreement,” the official said.

    Israel’s retaliatory military campaign after October 7 has disproportionately killed at least 31,490 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said late Thursday that Hamas “is continuing to hold unrealistic demands” but that an update on truce talks would be submitted to Israel’s war cabinet on Friday.

  • Syria war death toll over 507,000, 13 years on

    Syria war death toll over 507,000, 13 years on

    Syria’s war has killed more than 507,000 people, a war monitor said Thursday ahead of the 13th anniversary of the conflict which has displaced millions at home and abroad.

    The government’s brutal suppression of an uprising that erupted on March 15, 2011, triggered a full-scale civil war that drew in foreign armies and international jihadists.

    The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said more than 164,000 civilians, including more than 15,000 women and 25,000 children, have been killed.

    More than 343,000 combatants, including army soldiers, fighters from pro-Iran groups, Kurdish-led forces and Islamic State group jihadists, are also among the dead, added the Observatory, which has a network of sources across the country.

    The overall figure has risen from around 503,000 last March, with the frontlines mostly quietening in recent years.

    Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has gradually clawed back territory lost early in the fighting with help from allies Iran and Russia, but large swathes of the north remain outside government control.

    The United Nations has said that this year, 16.7 million people in Syria require some type of humanitarian assistance or protection, “the largest number since the beginning of the crisis in 2011”.

    The war has ravaged Syria’s economy, infrastructure and industry, while Western sanctions have added to the country’s woes.

    Syria is home to around 7.2 million internally displaced people, the UN says, with a devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria in February last year compounding the problem.

    Ninety percent of the population is living in poverty, but UN humanitarian official David Carden said last week that funding challenges could affect aid deliveries and services.

    Suhair Zakkout, Damascus-based spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said 13 years of war have had “devastating consequences” on Syrians across the country, causing “unimaginable pain”.

    “Syria has a full generation… who has only witnessed the loss, the displacement, the war, and they know nothing but these things,” Zakkout said.

    Humanitarian organisations are working “to sustain the minimum level of the basic services” such as water and health so that “they don’t collapse”, Zakkout said.

    UN-facilitated efforts towards a political process remain stalled.

    Special envoy Geir Pedersen said last month that Moscow and Damascus had rejected holding talks in Geneva, the venue for previous negotiations aimed at forging a new constitution for Syria.

    Last year, Syria returned to the Arab League, marking Assad’s return to the regional fold after a suspension of more than a decade.

  • Soldier killed in central Israel stabbing: Army

    An Israeli soldier was killed in a stabbing attack in central Israel on Thursday, the military said, and a police official said the assailant was shot dead.

    The Israeli military identified the victim as 51-year-old Uri Moyal, a command sergeant major, and said on its website he “was killed during an attack at the intersection of Beit Kama”, a kibbutz roughly 55 kilometres (35 miles) southwest of Jerusalem.

    Israeli police commissioner Yaakov Shabtai told reporters at the scene of the attack that the perpetrator was a 23-year-old man who grew up in Gaza until he was 18 but had moved to Israel four years ago and “got married here”.

    Police “immediately arrived at the scene and the initial investigation revealed that a terrorist entered the restaurant on the spot, stabbed a soldier who returned fire at the terrorist and neutralised him,” a police statement said.

    A police official later told AFP that the assailant was killed.

    The Magen David Adom emergency service treated the soldier and transported him to a hospital in Beersheba, in southern Israel, the statement said.

    “We arrived at the scene in large numbers, we saw a great commotion, and next to one of the stores a man in his 50s was lying unconscious and suffering from stab wounds to his body,” Kalman Ginzburg, a senior paramedic with MDA, said in a statement.

    “We immediately put him on mobile ICU and took him to hospital in critical condition while performing resuscitation.”

    The attack came one day after police said two Israeli security personnel were wounded in a stabbing carried out by a 15-year-old Palestinian boy on a bicycle.

    That attack occurred at the Tunnels checkpoint south of Jerusalem, and police later pronounced the assailant dead.

    Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed 31,341 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry.

  • Turks Up In Arms Over Killing Of Stray Cat

    Turks Up In Arms Over Killing Of Stray Cat

    The killing of a stray cat in Istanbul has triggered petitions, protests and death threats, pushing the president to intervene and the courts to retry the culprit.

    On January 1, Ibrahim K. was caught on a security camera in the lobby of the building where he lived kicking to death a stray cat named Eros that his neighbours regularly fed.

    He was sentenced in early February to 18 months in jail but was then released for good behaviour, sparking indignation among animal welfare groups and a section of the public in Turkey, whose large stray cat population is often fed and sheltered.

    Some 320,000 people signed an online petition demanding a stiffer sentence and in late February the justice ministry said Ibrahim K. would be retried after it received a night-time call from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan saying he was taking a “personal” interest in the case.

    Ibrahim K. was retried on Wednesday in a court building where hundreds of people thronged the corridors and the atmosphere was tense.

    The judges increased his sentence by one year but did not order him to be detained, ignoring the demands of animal welfare groups and internet trolls who have sent him death threats.

    One animal rights group is to appeal, saying Ibrahim K. should be jailed for the maximum four years allowed by law.

    On Thursday, the hashtag #JusticeforEros (#ErosicinAdalet) was trending on X, formerly Twitter, in Turkey and several major newspapers, including Hurriyet, splashed pictures of the dead cat on their front pages.

    Hurriyet carried several articles about Eros and “Ibrahim the killer”.

    Several celebrities have joined the Justice for Eros appeal, including Argentinian footballer Mauro Icardi, the star striker at Istanbul giants and reigning Turkish champions Galatasaray.

  • Amid ‘Katespiracy’, Meghan Markle returns to Instagram

    Amid ‘Katespiracy’, Meghan Markle returns to Instagram

    Meghan Markle, the wife of Britain’s Prince Harry, is launching a new lifestyle brand seemingly named after the couple’s oceanside California home. An Instagram page and website for American Riviera Orchard went live without advance warning Thursday, both featuring a gold-colored crest for the new venture. 

    The logo featured the word Montecito, the celebrity enclave where the couple have lived since 2020, which is close to Santa Barbara — itself sometimes known as the American Riviera. The social media account’s biography simply reads: “by Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex.”

    A representative for the duchess confirmed her participation in the new venture to AFP, without providing further details. American Riviera Orchard appears to be a kitchen and lifestyle-themed brand.

    Thursday’s launch was accompanied by a grainy, retro-style promotional video in which Meghan Markle is seen arranging flowers and baking in a kitchen. A mailing list offered users the chance to sign up to become “the first to know about products, availability, and updates from American Riviera Orchard.”

    Harry and Meghan, who is American, quit royal duties in 2020 and relocated to California. Their official Instagram handle has not posted since then. Meghan’s personal social media accounts and former lifestyle blog were both closed before the couple married.

    In recent years, the couple have pursued a variety of media ventures. They criticised Britain’s royal family in a string of high-profile outpourings including a Netflix documentary series and Harry’s blockbuster autobiography Spare.

    The couple had a Spotify-exclusive podcast deal, which came to an end last year after just one show. Netflix also dropped an animated series created by Meghan but an executive for the streaming giant in January said multiple projects from the couple, including a movie, remained “in very early development.”

  • Palestinian leader names adviser Mohammed Mustafa as PM

    Palestinian leader names adviser Mohammed Mustafa as PM

    Ramallah (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has appointed Mohammed Mustafa, a long-trusted adviser on economic affairs, as prime minister, the official Wafa news agency said on Thursday.

    Mustafa’s appointment comes less than three weeks after his predecessor, Mohammed Shtayyeh, resigned, citing the need for change after the October 7 attacks leading to Israeli genocide in Gaza.

    The 69-year-old now faces the task of forming a new government for the Palestinian Authority, which has limited powers in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

    Since 2007, control of the Palestinian territories has been divided between Abbas’s Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

    Mustafa, who studied at George Washington University in the United States, is an independent executive committee member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation — dominated by the ruling Fatah movement.

    He has served as deputy prime minister for economic affairs, held a board seat at the Palestine Investment Fund and worked in a number of senior positions at the World Bank.

    He has also advised the Kuwaiti government and the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, the Public Investment Fund.

    Mustafa was also involved in reconstruction efforts in Gaza after Israel’s 2014 invasion.

    ‘Right-hand man’

    Mustafa’s appointment represents an attempt to bolster Palestinian institutions and “close some loopholes in the Palestinian Authority” at a time when Abbas is “under siege and under pressure” from Israel and the United States, Palestinian analyst Abdul Majeed Sweilem told AFP.

    Mustafa would likely be seen as “acceptable to the Americans as he follows a liberal approach,” Sweilem added.

    The White House on Thursday welcomed Mustafa’s appointment, calling on him to deliver “credible and far-reaching reforms” as he prepares his cabinet.

    “A reformed Palestinian Authority is essential to delivering results for the Palestinian people and establishing the conditions for stability in both the West Bank and Gaza,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement.

    Yet Khalil Shaheen, political analyst and writer, said Mustafa’s closeness to Abbas limits prospects for major change.

    “In the end, the man (Mustafa) remains the right-hand man of President Abbas… Abbas wants to say that he supports reforms, but they remain under his control,” Shaheen said.

    The Israeli military offensive after October 7 in Gaza has killed at least 31,341 people, most of them women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.

    During the war, violence in the West Bank has flared to levels unseen in nearly two decades.

    Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 430 Palestinians in the West Bank since the Gaza war began, according to the health ministry in Ramallah.

    The United States and other powers have called for a reformed Palestinian Authority to take charge of all Palestinian territories after the end of the war.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has rejected postwar plans for Palestinian sovereignty.

    Shortly after Shtayyeh’s resignation in late February, Palestinian factions including Hamas and Fatah participated in talks hosted by Russia that addressed the war in Gaza and post-war plans.

    Afterwards the factions said in a statement they would pursue “unity of action” in confronting Israel.

  • Israeli general in Gaza criticises political leaders

    Israeli general in Gaza criticises political leaders

    An Israeli general leading troops in Gaza has delivered rare public criticism of the country’s political leadership, demanding it “be worthy” of the soldiers fighting against Hamas in the Palestinian territory.

    Brigadier General Dan Goldfus, head of the 98th division deployed in Gaza’s main southern city of Khan Yunis, also appeared to enter into a row over exempting ultra-Orthodox Jews from military service.

    He was subsequently summoned by the military leadership for his comments, which breached a long-standing taboo on uniformed officers publicly wading into politics.

    “You must be worthy of us,” Goldfus said of his country’s leaders, in comments broadcast on Israeli television on Wednesday.

    He called for Israeli politicians “to push aside the extreme, and adopt togetherness” in the Gaza following October 7 attacks.

    The general vowed that military commanders and soldiers would take responsibility for their actions.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far stopped short of assuming personal responsibility for Israel’s intelligence failures on October 7 and said any official investigations must take place after the war.

    “We will not run from responsibility. We bow our heads in light of our reverberating failure on October 7, but at the same time are leading forward,” the general said.

    Since Israel launched a ground offensive in Gaza on October 27, 249 soldiers have been killed in the Palestinian territory, according to the military.

    Addressing Israel’s political leaders, Goldfus called on them to ensure that “everyone takes part” in enlisting in the armed forces, in an apparent reference to ultra-Orthodox Israeli men being exempt from national service — a contentious political issue.

    Most Jewish men are required by law to serve in the Israeli military, but members of the ultra-Orthodox minority — known in Hebrew as Haredim — have long been given sweeping exemptions.

    Since the October 7 attack, public frustration over the exemption has resurfaced, adding pressure on Netanyahu’s governing coalition, which relies on ultra-Orthodox allies staunchly opposed to drafting Haredi men.

    Neither Netanyahu nor Defence Minister Yoav Gallant publicly responded to Goldfus’s remarks.

    Some lawmakers voiced their approval while others expressed dissatisfaction with the general making political statements of any kind.

    Yoav Segalovitz, a centrist opposition lawmaker, told Kan public radio on Thursday that “a uniformed officer needs to talk only about what’s related to his decisions or take off the uniform”.

    Writing in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, columnist Nahum Barnea said that “with all respect to the heartfelt sentiments of the esteemed officer, fighting in Gaza doesn’t give him the right or the authority to express a position on political matters”.

    Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed at least 31,341 Palestinians since October 7, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry.

  • Streaming giant Spotify adds music videos to output

    Streaming giant Spotify adds music videos to output

    Stockholm (AFP) – Music streaming giant Spotify on Wednesday announced it would be posting music videos on its platform in “select markets”, entering an arena long dominated by YouTube.

    “The beta version of music videos on Spotify begins rolling out today…,” the company said in a statement.

    It would release limited catalogue of hits from global artists such as Ed Sheeran, Doja Cat, and Ice Spice, as well as local favourites, it added.

    Initially, the music videos will only be available to paying subscribers in the UK, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Brazil, Colombia,the Philippines, Indonesia, and Kenya.

    In early February, Spotify announced it had passed 600 million monthly users, of which 236 million were paying subscribers.

    Google’s streaming behemoth YouTube has long dominated music videos online, with much of the platform’s most-viewed content being music videos.

    Songs like Luis Fonsi’s “Despacito,” Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” and K-pop star Psy’s viral hit “Gangnam Style” each gathered several billion views.

    Spotify has invested heavily since its launch to fuel growth with expansions into new markets and, most recently, exclusive content such as podcasts.