Category: FOREIGN

Update

Lebanon pager blasts toll rises to 12: Minister

Lebanon’s Health Minister Firass Abiad has updated that 12 people have been killed after paging devices used by Hezbollah exploded across the country on Tuesday.

Among the dead are two children, while the number of wounded are between 2,750 and 2,800. Some injured are being treated in Syria while others will be sent to Iran, according to the minister.

Previously, it was reported Israel’s use of advanced technology in attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon has claimed nine lives and more than 3,000 injured, including Hezbollah’s fighters and Iran’s envoy to Beirut.

Almost 5000 pagers in possession of Hezbollah members in different areas of Lebanon exploded simultaneously.

Reuters reported that Israel’s spy agency Mosad planted explosives inside the pagers imported by the Lebanese fighter group Hezbollah before Tuesday’s explosions.

Nine people, including a child, were martyred in pager blasts, while more than 2,500 were injured, 200 of them are in critical condition, as per Lebanon’s Ministry of Health.

Several Hezbollah fighters were also injured by explosions in pager devices used for communication.

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, has also severely been injured as a result of pager blasts, losing one eye while the other one is injured.

Media reports suggest that explosions in pager devices took place in southern Lebanon and the suburbs of Beirut. Wounded members of Hezbollah have been taken to the hospital, many of them in critical condition.

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In the videos that have surfaced it can be seen that the hospitals are filled with the wounded.

Most of the injured have wounds on their hands, feet, faces, stomachs and eyes.

The detonation of the pagers is being termed the biggest security breach since the genocide in Gaza began on October 7.

The series of explosions in pagers started at 3:45 pm and continued for about an hour.

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There were explosions in several wireless communication devices across Lebanon, as a result of which many people were injured, says a statement issued by the security forces of Lebanon.

Reuters report that the pagers in which the blasts took place were modern models that had been purchased in recent months from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, but the company said in a statement it did not manufacture the devices. It said they were made by a company called BAC which has a licence to use its brand, but gave no more details.

“The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it,” Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang told reporters at the company’s offices in the northern Taiwanese city of New Taipei on Wednesday.

“For Israel to embed an explosive trigger within the new batch of pagers, they would have likely needed access to the supply chain of these devices,” Brussels-based military and security analyst Elijah Magnier told AFP.

“Israeli intelligence has infiltrated the production process, adding an explosive component and remote triggering mechanism into the pagers without raising suspicion,” he said, raising the prospect the third party which sold the devices could have been an “intelligence front” set up by Israel for the purpose.

An investigation has been launched by Lebanon to determine whether the pagers arrived in Lebanon directly from Taiwan or were imported to Lebanon from a third country.

Hezbollah has directly blamed Israel for the pager blasts.

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Lebanese media claim that the pager explosions happened after the devices were hacked by Israel. Eyewitness account shared that the pagers first got extremely hot and then exploded.

What is a pager?

Pager was the most popular messaging device used around the world till the last century.

It is a wireless device that transmits messages through electronic waves, through which written and voice messages can be sent.

Invented in the 50s and 60s of the 20th century, this device saw its rise in the 80s.

However, it is still used by emergency services and security agencies in most countries because modern pagers are considered more secure than mobile phones.

An investigative report by Turkish media said that the pager sends messages on sophisticated systems, but hacking is possible.

Pagers operate on radio frequency and the radio frequency can be controlled remotely.

The local media claims that the pager contained less than 20 grams of explosives which were detonated through calls and messages. Mossad had infiltrated the pagers’ supply chain.

Hezbollah says ‘will continue’ fight to support Gaza after pager blasts

Lebanon’s Hezbollah said Wednesday it “will continue, as in all the past days, its blessed operations to support Gaza”, after a deadly wave of exploding pagers the Iran-backed militant group blamed on Israel.

“This path is ongoing and separate from the difficult reckoning that the criminal enemy must await for its massacre on Tuesday,” the group said in a statement issued on Telegram.

Videos have emerged online of Hindu extremists damaging the property of Muslims and storming a procession on Eid Milad-ul-Nabi in India’s Uttar Pradesh.

Indian media reports state that an extremist Hindu mob in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly stopped the procession on the occasion of Eid Milad-ul-Nabi by blocking the road and pelting stones at the procession.

As per details, a procession was to be held in Bareilly for which formal permission was taken, but a few hours before the procession, the administration said that the local people had complained, so the venue of the procession was changed.

After negotiations with the administration, it was decided that the procession will be taken out from another road but when the Hindu extremists came to know about it, they blocked the road and stopped the Eid Milad-ul-Nabi procession. A heavy police force reached the spot and brought the situation under control.

Another video has emerged of a Muslim youth being bullied by some extremists for hoisting an Eid Milad un Nabi flag on his bike as they mistook it to be a flag of Pakistan.

A Pakistani man with alleged ties to Iran pleaded not guilty Monday to plotting to assassinate a US official in retaliation for the American military killing of Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Asif Raza Merchant, 46, allegedly sought to hire a hitman to assassinate a politician or a government official in the United States, the Justice Department and prosecutors said in a statement.

A court document showed that Merchant pleaded not guilty to all counts, with a next hearing scheduled for November 6, 2024.

Soleimani, the head of Iran’s foreign military operations, was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020. Iranian officials have repeatedly vowed to avenge his killing.

“As these terrorism and murder for hire charges against Asif Merchant demonstrate, we will continue to hold accountable those who would seek to carry out Iran’s lethal plotting against Americans,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said previously.

The intended victim was not identified but the Garland has previously said no evidence has emerged to link Merchant with the July 13 assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

FBI Director Christopher Wray has said the Pakistani national had “close ties to Iran” and that the alleged murder-for-hire plot was “straight out of the Iranian playbook.”

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Another FBI official said the assassins Merchant allegedly tried to hire were in fact undercover FBI agents.

“After spending time in Iran, Merchant arrived in the United States from Pakistan and contacted a person he believed could assist him with the scheme to kill a politician or government official,” the Justice Department said in a statement.

“That person reported Merchant’s conduct to law enforcement and became a confidential source.”

Merchant was arrested on July 12 as he planned to leave the country.

However, on September 12, he was charged by a US court.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations said in August it had “not received any report on this from the American government.”

“But it is clear that this method is contrary to the Iranian government’s policy of pursuing Soleimani’s killer,” the mission said in a statement carried by Iran’s official IRNA news agency.

At least 10 people were killed and dozens injured when a bus crashed in central Iran, official media reported on Tuesday.

The bus overturned in Yazd province while travelling between the cities of Bushehr in southwestern Iran and Mashhad in the northeast, state television said.

“The accident left 10 people dead and 41 injured, according to initial figures,” it said, without specifying the total number of passengers on board.

Iran has a poor road safety record, with more than 20,000 deaths in accidents recorded in the year to March, according to the judiciary’s Legal Medicine Organisation cited by local media.

Last month, a bus carrying Pakistani pilgrims crashed in central Iran, killing 28 people en route to Iraq for Chehlum, one of the most significant events in the Shia Muslim calendar.

Days later, another bus crash killed three people and injured 48 others.

The Aam Aadmi Party has nominated Atishi Marlena Singh as their new Chief Minister of New Delhi following Arvind Kejriwal’s resignation.

The announcement was made by party officials, according to Indian media reports.

Kejriwal resigned from his position after a meeting with Lt. Governor VK Saxena, during which he suggested Atishi as the new Chief Minister.

The nomination was then approved by all party members in the following meeting.

Atishi Marlena has been a close aide of Arvind Kejriwal and has served in various significant roles within Delhi’s government, including in education, finance, revenue, and law.

She holds degrees in History from Delhi University and Oxford University and is a Chevening scholar.

Atishi has also won the Kalkaji constituency in the 2020 Delhi Assembly elections.

Notably, Arvind Kejriwal, the former Chief Minister of New Delhi, was released on bail after six months in the liquor policy case, after which he announced his resignation.

Atishi is scheduled to take the oath of office later today at approximately 4:30 PM.

Zimbabwe will cull 200 elephants as it faces an unprecedented drought that has led to food shortages while also tackling a ballooning population of the animals, the country’s wildlife authority said Friday.

The country has “more elephants than it needed”, Zimbabwe’s environment minister said in parliament on Wednesday, adding that the government had instructed the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authority (ZimParks) to begin the culling process.

The 200 elephants will be hunted in areas where they have clashed with humans, including Hwange, home of Zimbabwe’s largest natural reserve, ZimParks Director General Fulton Mangwanya told AFP.

Zimbabwe is home to an estimated 100,000 elephants and has the second-biggest elephant population in the world after Botswana. Thanks to conservation efforts, Hwange is home to 65,000 of them, more than four times its capacity, according to ZimParks. Zimbabwe last culled elephants in 1988.

Neighbouring Namibia has already killed 160 in a cull of more than 700 elephants to cope with its worst drought in decades.

Zimbabwe and Namibia are among a swathe of countries in southern Africa that have declared a state of emergency because of drought.

However, the move to hunt the animals for food was not welcomed across the board.

“[The] Government must have more sustainable eco-friendly methods to dealing with drought without affecting tourism,” said Farai Maguwu, director of the nonprofit Centre for Natural Resource Governance. “They risk turning away tourists on ethical grounds. The elephants are more profitable alive than dead.”

He added, “We have shown that we are poor custodians of natural resources, and our appetite for ill-gotten wealth knows no bounds, so this must be stopped because it is unethical.”

On the other hand, Chris Brown, a conservationist and CEO of the Namibian Chamber of Environment, said that “elephants have a devastating effect on habitat if they are allowed to increase continually, exponentially”.

“They really damage ecosystems and habitats, and they have a huge impact on other species which are less iconic and therefore matter less in the eyes of the eurocentric, urban armchair conservation people,” he said. “Those species matter as much as elephants. “

Sweden plans to boost payments to up to $34,000 to immigrants who leave the nation that has been a haven for the war-weary and persecuted, the right-wing government said on Thursday.

The Scandinavian country was for decades seen as a “humanitarian sup­erpower” but, over the years, has struggled to integrate many of its newcomers. Immigrants who voluntarily return to their countries of origin from 2026 would be eligible to receive up to 350,000 Swedish kronor, the government, which is prop­ped up by the anti-immigration Swe­d­en Democrats, told a press conference.

“We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our migration policy,” Migration Minister Johan Forssell told reporters as the government presented its latest move to crack down on migration.

Currently, immigrants can receive up to 10,000 kronor per adult and 5,000 kronor per child, with a cap of 40,000 kronor per family. Immigr­ants groups could not immediately be reached for comment on the change.

“The grant has been around since 1984, but it is relatively unknown, it is small and relatively few people use it,” Ludvig Aspling of the Sweden Democrats told reporters.

Forssell said only one person had accepted the offer last year. Aspling added that if more people were aware of the grant and its size was increased, more would likely take the money and leave.

He said the incentive would most likely appeal to the several hundred thousand migrants who were either long-term unemployed, jobless or whose incomes were so low they needed state benefits to make ends meet. “That’s the group we think would be interested,” Aspling said.

A government-appointed probe last month advised the government against significantly hiking the amount of the grant, saying the expected effectiveness did not justify the potential costs.

The Nordic nation has struggled for years to integrate immigrants, and the head of the inquiry, Joakim Ruist, said that a sizeable financial inc­rease would send a signal that mig­rants were undesirable, further hampering integration efforts. Other European cou­ntries also offer grants as an ince­ntive for migrants to return home.

Denmark pays more than $15,000 per person, compared to around $1,400 in Norway, $2,800 in France and $2,000 in Germany.

Sweden’s Prime Min­i­ster Ulf Kris­t­e­r­sson came to power in 2022 with a minority government propped up by the Sweden Democrats, vowing to get tough on immigration and crime. The Sweden Democrats emerged as the second-largest party. Sweden has offered generous foreign development aid since the 1970s and has taken in large numbers of migrants since the 1990s.

Donald Trump on Thursday announced he will not participate in another televised debate with his Democratic rival Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of November´s presidential election.

“There will be no third debate!,” the Republican candidate wrote on his Truth Social platform, including in his tally the earlier debate with US President Joe Biden in June and his Tuesday showdown with Harris.

The Democratic candidate put Trump on the defensive in their ABC News-hosted clash, watched by 67 million people. Almost immediately, her campaign called for a second showdown in October.

The day after the debate, Trump said he “would do NBC and would do Fox, too.” However, his latest statement, issued in his characteristic mix of all-caps segments and insults, made clear he has bowed out — while claiming that Harris is just desperate for a second chance.

“Polls clearly show that I won the Debate against Comrade Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ Radical Left Candidate, on Tuesday night, and she immediately called for a Second Debate,” he wrote in his post.

“When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH,’” he said.

A CNN snap poll of viewers said Harris performed better than Trump by 63% to 37, while a YouGov poll said Harris laid out a clearer plan by 43 to 32%.

A debate between the vice presidential running mates, Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Republican Senator J.D. Vance, from Ohio, is currently set to be hosted by CBS News on October 1.