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Category: FOREIGN

  • Palestinian prisoner in Israel wins top fiction prize

    Palestinian prisoner in Israel wins top fiction prize

    Palestinian writer Basim Khandaqji, jailed 20 years ago in Israel, won a prestigious prize for Arabic fiction on Sunday for his novel “A Mask, the Colour of the Sky”.

    The award of the 2024 International Prize for Arabic Fiction was announced at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi.

    The prize was accepted on Khandaqji’s behalf by Rana Idriss, owner of Dar al-Adab, the book’s Lebanon-based publisher.

    Khandaqji was born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Nablus in 1983, and wrote short stories until his arrest in 2004 at the age of 21.

    He was convicted and jailed on charges relating to a bombing in Tel Aviv, and completed his university education from inside jail via the internet.

    The mask in the novel’s title refers to the blue identity card that Nur, an archaeologist living in a refugee camp in Ramallah, finds in the pocket of an old coat belonging to an Israeli.

    Khandaqji’s book was chosen from 133 works submitted to the competition.

    Nabil Suleiman, who chaired the jury, said the novel “dissects a complex, bitter reality of family fragmentation, displacement, genocide, and racism”.

    Since being jailed Khandaqji has written poetry collections including “Rituals of the First Time” and “The Breath of a Nocturnal Poem”.

    He has also written three earlier novels.

    bur-srk/srm

    © Agence France-Presse

  • Spanish PM’s supporters turn out and beg him to stay

    Spanish PM’s supporters turn out and beg him to stay

    Madrid, Spain – Thousands of supporters of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez rallied at the headquarters of his Socialist party imploring him not to step down over a graft investigation against his wife.

    The 52-year-old, who has been in office since 2018, stunned Spain on Wednesday when he put his resignation on the line after a Madrid court opened a preliminary investigation into suspected influence peddling and corruption against his spouse Begona Gomez.

    Sanchez said he would suspend all public duties until he announces his decision on Monday. The normally hyperactive premier has since remained out of sight and silent.

    According to Madrid city authorities, the crowd rallying on Saturday to beg Sanchez to stay on numbered around 12,500.

    Supporters held up placards saying “Spain needs you”, “Pedro don’t abandon us’, and shouted slogans such as “Pedro leader”.

    “I hope that Sanchez will say on Monday that he will stay,” said Sara Dominguez, a consultant in her 30’s, adding that his government had “taken good steps for women, the LGBT community and minorities”.

    Jose María Diez, a 44-year-old government official who came from Valladolid in northern Spain to express his support, said there was a real possibility that the far-right could take power if Sanchez quit.

    “This will mean a step backwards for our rights and liberties,” he warned.

    Inside the party headquarters, there were similar passionate appeals.

    ‘Pedro stay’

    “Pedro stay. We are together and together we can … take the country forward, Spain can’t step back,” said Budget Minister Maria Jesus Montero, the government number two.

    “Today all democrats, all progressives, are summoned to Madrid against a pack whose only aim is to overthrow a democratic and legitimate government,” said Felix Bolanos, Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Parliamentary Relations.

    At one point, Socialist leaders took to the streets to thank those gathered. “They won’t succeed,” government spokeswoman Pilar Alegria told the crowd.

    The court opened the investigation into Sanchez’s wife in response to a complaint from anti-corruption pressure group Manos Limpias (Clean Hands), whose leader is linked to the far right.

    The group, which has presented a litany of unsuccessful lawsuits against politicians in the past, said on Wednesday its complaint was based on media reports and could not vouch for their veracity.

    While the court did not give details of the case, online news site El Confidencial said it focused on links Gomez had to Spanish tourism group Globalia when carrier Air Europa was in talks with the government to secure a huge bailout.

    The airline sought the bailout after it was badly hit by plunging paseenger numbers during the Covid-19 crisis.

    At the time, Gomez was running IE Africa Centre, a foundation linked to Madrid’s Instituto de Empresa (IE) business school, which had signed a sponsorship agreement with Globalia in 2020.

    Spain’s public prosecutors office on Thursday requested the dismissal of the investigation, which Sanchez said was part of a campaign of “harassment” against him and his wife waged by “media heavily influenced by the right and far right”.

    If Sanchez decides to remain in office, he could choose to file a confidence motion in parliament to show that he and his minority government are still supported by a majority of lawmakers.

    If he resigns, an early election could be called from July — a year after the last one — with or without Sanchez at the helm of the Socialist party.

    The right-wing opposition has accused the prime minister of being irresponsible for putting the country on hold while he mulls his decision.

    “It’s very clear to us that this is all a tactic… We know Pedro Sanchez and things with him always turn out like a soap opera,” Cuca Gamarra, the number two of the main opposition conservative Popular Party, said on Friday.

    “He is making us all wait and the country is at a standstill,” she added.

    du/ach/gv

    © Agence France-Presse

  • Iraqi female TikTok star shot dead: officials

    Iraqi female TikTok star shot dead: officials

    A gunman on a motorbike shot dead a well-known Iraqi social media influencer known as Om Fahad outside her Baghad home on Friday, Iraqi security officials told AFP.

    An unidentified attacker shot Om Fahad in her car in the Zayouna district, a security official said, requesting anonymity because he was not cleared to speak to the media.

    Another security source said the attacker appeared to have pretended to be making a food delivery.

    Om Fahad had become known for light-hearted TikTok videos of herself dancing to Iraqi music wearing tight-fitting clothes.

    In February 2023, a court sentenced her to six months in jail for sharing “videos containing indecent speech that undermines modesty and public morality”.

    The Iraqi government launched a campaign last year to clean up social media content that it said breached Iraqi “morals and traditions”.

    An interior ministry committee was established to scour TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms for clips it deemed offensive.

    Several influencers have since been arrested, according to authorities.

    Despite years of war and sectarian conflict after the 2003 US invasion to overthrew Saddam Hussein, Iraq has returned to a semblance of normality.

    But civil liberties — for women, sexual minorities and other groups — remain constrained in the conservative society.

    In 2018, model and influencer Tara Fares was shot dead by gunmen in Baghdad.

  • Woman hides two kilos of cocaine in false hair braids

    Woman hides two kilos of cocaine in false hair braids

    A woman who was carrying two kilos (4.4 pounds) of cocaine in false hair braids has been jailed for 18 months in the French Caribbean territory of Guadeloupe, a regional customs official said Friday.

    The 24-year-old woman from Guyana was caught at an airport in March, said Olivier Fouque, regional customs director.

    The cocaine was in “tubes hidden in false braids,” the official said. The woman was jailed for 18 months and fined 30,000 euros, he added without giving more details.

    Fouque cited the woman as an example of new ways being used to get drugs into France’s Caribbean islands after the introduction of tougher airport checks.

    Last year there were 47 cases of people being detained for carrying cocaine and other drugs in their stomachs, according to the official.

    This year, there have been “one or two”, he added.

    France introduced tougher checks on flights in Guyana in 2022 and the tactic was extended to Guadeloupe and Martinique in March this year.

    Fouque said at least 30 “suspect” people had been turned away from flights at France’s Caribbean airports this year.

  • 37 million tonnes of debris in Gaza could take years to clear: UN

    37 million tonnes of debris in Gaza could take years to clear: UN

    There are some 37 million tonnes of debris to clear away in Gaza once the Israeli offensive is over, a senior official with the UN Mine Action Service said Friday (Apr 26).

    And unexploded ordnance buried in the rubble would complicate that work, said UNMAS’ Pehr Lodhammar, who has run mine programmes in countries such as Iraq.

    It was impossible to say how much of the ammunition fired in Gaza remained live, said Lodhammar.

    “We know that typically there is a failure rate of at least 10% of land service ammunition,” he told journalists in Geneva.

    “What we do know is that we estimated 37 million tonnes of debris, which is approximately 300 kilos of debris per square metre,” he added.

    Starting from a hypothetical number of 100 trucks, that would take 14 years to clear away, he said.

    Lodhammar was speaking as UNMAS launched its 2023 annual report Friday.

    The war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas erupted when the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on Oct 7.

    The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people in Israel, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

    Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas, and its ensuing military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 34,356 people, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

  • Baby girl born after pregnant mother martyred died

    Baby girl born after pregnant mother martyred died

    The daughter of a pregnant woman who was martyred in the Israeli attack at Rafah in the occupied Palestinian territory of Gaza, has also died.

    Last week, a pregnant woman, Sabrin Al-Sakini, her husband and three-year-old daughter were martyred as a result of the Israeli attack in the Rafah area of Gaza. The doctors saved the daughter of Sabrin Al-Sakini by performing an emergency operation and the new-born girl was named ‘Shaheed Sabreen’s daughter’.

    The doctors who took care of the baby girl said that the weight of the baby girl at the time of birth was 1.4 kg and that her condition was improving. However, according to the British Broadcasting Corporation, the newborn girl died yesterday and was buried next to her mother.

    More than 34,000 people have been martyred as a result of the ongoing Israeli aggression in Gaza since October 7, 2023, including more than 14,000 children and more than 9,000 women.

  • Calls for mosque demolition weigh on India’s Muslim voters

    Calls for mosque demolition weigh on India’s Muslim voters

    Muslim teacher Tasleem Qureshi’s walk to the polls on Friday took her past the yellow barricades and police cordon guarding her local mosque — a looming flashpoint in India’s religious divide.

    Her hometown Mathura is the site of the Shahi Idgah, an Islamic house of worship that the Hindu faithful believe was built over the birthplace of the deity Krishna.

    Hindu activists want to “reclaim” the site in a campaign endorsed by members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

    “The BJP keeps saying that the Shahi Idgah will cease to exist after the elections,” Qureshi, 48, told AFP.

    “We will not let that happen and we will protect it with our lives,” she said.

    Modi is widely expected to win a third term in office once India’s six-week-long election concludes in June, in large part thanks to his championing of the country’s majority faith.

    Mathura is one of several locations across India’s northern heartlands where activists have sought to replace centuries-old Islamic monuments with Hindu temples.

    In January, Modi presided over the inauguration of a grand temple to Ram, one of the most important deities in the Hindu pantheon.

    It was built in the northern city of Ayodhya on the grounds of a centuries-old mosque razed by Hindu zealots decades earlier.

    Modi told an audience of thousands at a glitzy ceremony attended by Bollywood celebrities and cricket stars that India was “creating the genesis of a new history”.

    Construction of the temple fulfilled a long-standing demand of Hindu activists and was widely celebrated across India, with extensive television coverage and street parties.

    Jubilant Hindu activists had proclaimed when the mosque was destroyed that more would follow, identifying the Shahi Idgah in Mathura as one of their future targets.

    Modi’s opponents accuse his Hindu-nationalist government of marginalising India’s 220-million-plus Muslim population.

    He was accused last weekend of “blatantly targeting” the faith in a campaign speech in which he claimed his opponents had once pledged that Muslims had “first right over the nation’s wealth”.

    Temples small and large line Mathura’s narrow, pot-holed streets, teeming with young men offering guided tours for pilgrims.

    The street leading to the mosque has for decades been guarded by a stern, round-the-clock police detachment to prevent vandalism.

    A polling station nearby is testament to the close quarters in which the city’s two main faiths live, with women in Muslim dress voting alongside saffron-clad Hindu priests.

    But with Hindus accounting for more than 80 percent of Mathura’s population, its religious divide is a microcosm of the one across India at large.

    Its parliamentary seat has been held by the BJP since Modi was first elected in 2014, represented by movie star Hema Malini, and the Ayodhya temple’s inauguration has galvanised Hindu voters in the city who support the mosque’s removal.

    Gokul Prasad, an electrician, told AFP that Modi’s inauguration of the Ayodhya temple was the “single most important issue” of the election campaign.

    “Since we live in Mathura so close to the Shahi Idgah, we will obviously vote for Modi,” the 50-year-old said.

    The fate of the Shahi Idgah has also mobilised the city’s Muslim minority.

    But several told AFP that they had lined up to vote on Friday only to find their names were missing on the electoral rolls.

    “They told me neither I nor my husband can vote as our names are not there,” said 55-year-old Rehana Qureshi — no relation to Tasleem — outside a polling booth.

    “We have lived and voted here for generations,” she added. “It seems that the only right we Muslims still have is also being taken away.”

  • Xi tells Blinken US, China should be ‘partners, not rivals’

    Xi tells Blinken US, China should be ‘partners, not rivals’

    Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday told top US diplomat Antony Blinken that the world’s two biggest economies should be “partners, not rivals”, but that there were a “number of issues” to be resolved in their relations.

    Meeting Blinken in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, Xi said the two countries had “made some positive progress” since he met with US President Joe Biden last year, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

    “There are still a number of issues that need to be resolved, and there is still room for further efforts,” Xi said.

    “I proposed three major principles: mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation,” the Chinese leader added.

    “The earth is big enough to hold the common development and… prosperity of China and the United States,” he continued.

    “China would be pleased to see a confident and open, prosperous and developing United States,” Xi said.

    “We hope the US can also take a positive view of China’s development,” he added.

    “When this fundamental problem is solved… relations can truly stabilise, get better, and move forward.”

  • Indian election resumes as heatwave hits voters

    Indian election resumes as heatwave hits voters

    India’s six-week election juggernaut resumed Friday with millions of people lining up outside polling stations in parts of the country hit by a scorching heatwave.

    Prime Minister Narendra Modi is widely expected to win a third term in the election, which concludes in early June.

    But turnout in the first round of voting last week dropped nearly four points to 66 percent from the last election in 2019, with speculation in Indian media outlets that higher-than-average temperatures were to blame.

    Modi took to social media shortly before polls re-opened to urge those voting to turn out in “record numbers” despite the heat.

    “A high voter turnout strengthens our democracy,” he wrote on social media platform X. “Your vote is your voice!”

    The second round of the poll — conducted in phases to ease the immense logistical burden of staging an election in the world’s most populous country — includes districts that have this week seen temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).

    AFP – MOHAMMED

    India’s weather bureau said Thursday that severe heatwave conditions would continue in several states through the weekend.

    That includes parts of the eastern state of Bihar, where five districts are voting Friday and where temperatures more than 5.1 degrees Celsius above the seasonal average were recorded this week.

    Karnataka state in the south and parts of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state and heartland of the Hindu faith, are also scheduled to vote while facing heatwave conditions.

    Earlier this week, India’s election commission said it had formed a task force to review the impact of heatwaves and humidity before each round of voting.

    The Hindu newspaper suggested the decision could have been taken out of concerns that the intense heat “might have resulted in a dip in voter turnout”.

    In a Monday statement, the commission said it had “no major concern” about the impact of hot temperatures on Friday’s vote.

    AFP – SHARMA

    But it added that it had been closely monitoring weather reports and would ensure “the comfort and well-being of voters along with polling personnel”.

    A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted South and Southeast Asia, prompting thousands of schools across the Philippines and Bangladesh to suspend in-person classes.

    The heat disrupted campaigning in India on Wednesday when roads minister Nitin Gadkari fainted at a rally for Modi in Maharashtra state.

    Footage of the speech showed Gadkari falling unconscious and being carried off the stage by handlers. He later blamed the incident on discomfort “due to the heat”.

    Years of scientific research have found climate change is causing heatwaves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.

    AFP – SHARMA

    Friday will also see voting in the constituency of India’s most prominent opposition leader — Rahul Gandhi of the once-dominate Congress party.

    The 53-year-old is fighting to retain his seat in the southern state of Kerala, a stronghold for opponents of Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

    “It is the duty of every citizen to become a soldier of the constitution, step out of their homes today and vote to protect democracy,” he wrote on X.

    Gandhi is the son, grandson and great-grandson of former prime ministers, but his Congress party has suffered two landslide defeats against Modi in the last two general elections.

    Gandhi has been hamstrung by several criminal cases lodged against him by BJP members, including a conviction for criminal libel that saw him briefly disqualified from parliament last year.

    The opposition alliance has accused Modi’s government of using law enforcement agencies to selectively target its leaders and undermine its campaign.

    More than 968 million people are eligible to take part in India’s election, with the final round of voting on June 1 and results expected three days later.

  • Student demonstrations against Gaza genocide take world by storm

    Student demonstrations against Gaza genocide take world by storm

    Anti-Zionist students in the US have taken to their campuses to call out the blatant atrocities being committed by Israel in the besieged strip and the West Bank, and asking the universities to divest from investing in Israel.

    The demonstrations have now expanded beyond US borders.

    French police broke up a pro-Palestinian protest by dozens of university students in Paris, officials said Thursday, as Israel’s bombardment of Gaza sparks a wave of anger across college campuses in the United States.

    AFP reports that according to witnesses, the protesters were demanding that Sciences Po university “cut its ties with universities and companies that are complicit in the genocide in Gaza” and “end the repression of pro-Palestinian voices on campus”.

    Similarly, students in Sydney, Australia, have also set up a camp at Sydney University and carried out demonstrations.

    Background:

    The mass protests started from Columbia University on April 17 which then spread across colleges and universities in America.

    The US has been openly supporting and financing Israeli genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. And while many people have lost their jobs and students have been expelled due to their support for Gaza, the demonstrations on university campuses are getting bigger by the day.

    Top universities such as Yale, NYU, and Columbia are facing heightened tensions as pro-Palestinian demonstrators are being arrested amid escalating conflicts between the two sides of the genocides.

    Columbia granted students protesters an extension to disassemble their encampments twice, citing ongoing negotiations aimed at resolving the tense situation. All classes will be conducted virtually on Monday due to mounting tension.

    On Monday, 60 individuals at Yale, including 47 student protesters, were arrested for trespassing after blocking traffic around the campus. Additionally, several protesters were also arrested at NYU.

    Other American colleges and universities with Gaza encampments include Emerson College, MIT, Tufts, Michigan, Vanderbilt, Brown, Rice, and more.

    It is a big moment in the midst of a genocide, a point in time where we all must decide to stand on the right side of history.