Category: FOREIGN

Syrian state media said Monday that overnight Israeli strikes killed 14 people in central Hama province, with a war monitor reporting a higher death toll in raids on sensitive military sites.

The Israeli military, which has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since the start of the civil war there in 2011, declined to comment on the latest reported attack.

Syrian official news agency SANA, citing a medical source, said: “The number of martyrs resulting from the Israeli aggression on a number of sites in the vicinity of Masyaf has risen to 14 martyrs and 43 wounded, including six critically.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor reported “intense Israeli strikes” overnight, giving a death toll of “18 people” including eight Syrian fighters. It said 32 others were wounded.

Israeli strikes on Syria since 2011 have mainly targeted army positions and Iran-backed fighters, including from Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.

Israeli authorities rarely comment on individual strikes in Syria but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence.

Syria’s SANA news agency, citing a military source, reported that at “around 11:20 pm (2020 GMT) on Sunday, the Israeli enemy carried out an air attack” from the direction of northwest Lebanon “targeting a number of military sites in the central region”.

Air defences “shot down some” of the missiles, SANA reported.

The Observatory said, “Israeli strikes… targeted the scientific research area in Masyaf” in Hama province and other sites, destroying “buildings and military centres”.

The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria, had earlier said the strikes targeted sites “where pro-Iran groups and weapons development experts are stationed”.

It was “one of the most violent Israeli attacks” in Syria in years, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

He said Iranian experts “developing arms including precision missiles and drones” worked in the scientific research centre that was hit.

Nasser Kanani, spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, told a media briefing: “We strongly condemn this criminal attack by the Zionist regime on Syrian soil.”

Israeli raids on Syria surged after October 7 sparked a genocide in Gaza, then eased somewhat after an April 1 strike blamed on Israel hit the Iranian consular building in Damascus.

Syria has sought to stay out of the Israel-Hamas conflict, which has raised fears of a broader regional war.

In late August, several pro-Iranian fighters were killed in Syria’s central Homs region in strikes attributed to Israel, the Observatory had said.

Days later, the Israeli military said it killed an unspecified number of fighters belonging to Hamas ally Islamic Jihad in a strike in Syria near the Lebanese border.

The Syrian government’s brutal suppression of a 2011 uprising triggered the conflict that has killed more than half a million people and drawn in foreign armies and jihadists.

Iran-backed groups, including Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement, have bolstered President Bashar al-Assad’s forces during Syria’s civil war.

Israeli raids on Syria have also sought to cut off Hezbollah supply routes to Lebanon.

Iran Accuses Israel Over ‘Criminal’ Syria Attack

Iran on Monday accused its regional arch-foe Israel of carrying out what it called a “criminal” attack in central Syria, where state media said strikes killed at least 14 people.

“We strongly condemn this criminal attack by the Zionist regime on Syrian soil,” foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani told a news conference in Tehran, calling on Israel’s backers to “stop supporting and arming it”.

A video showing a woman rag picker being raped in Ujjain city of India, has surfaced online. A bystander filmed and posted the video online, clearly depicting that no one helped the victim.

The incident happened on the afternoon of September 4 in the Koyla Phatak area, one of the busiest intersections in the city, as per India Today.

The victim was allegedly lured by the suspect under the pretext of marriage. He got her intoxicated, took her to a roadside shelter and raped her.

Some people who were passing by shot videos of the incident instead of stopping the crime, reported Indian media.

The accused has been identified as Lokesh, who fled the scene after threatening the victim, but the video helped the police to locate her and later arrest him.

Indian media reported that the local police has also arrested an auto-rickshaw driver who filmed the incident and he has been identified as Mohammad Salim. The police also found the video in his phone. However, the information is being collected about all those who shared the video and further circulated it.

The incident sparked a political row in the country as the opposition blamed the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the “deteriorating law and order” in the holy state, pointing out that the crime took place in Chief Minister Mohan Yadav’s constituency.

However, the local BJP leadership argued that the Congress party was politicising the incident.

Journalist and human rights activist Rana Ayuub shared the news with the caption, “Your daily dose of trigger in this country.”

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A post shared by Rana Ayyub (@ranaayyub)

Indians are already protesting the rape and murder of Doctor Moumita Debanath, 31, a postgraduate trainee at a local Kolkata hospital, who was raped and murdered on the night of August 8. Her bruised body was found inside the seminar hall of the hospital.

Forget the polls, ditch the data and stop sending journalists to swing-state diners to interview undecided voters: historian Allan Lichtman already knows who is going to win the US presidential election.

“Harris will win,” Lichtman confidently announced to AFP.

He was speaking at his home in the leafy Washington suburb of Bethesda shortly after unveiling his much-discussed, once-every-four-years White House prediction, based on what he calls the “13 keys” method.

It can be easy to dismiss Lichtman’s signature methodology as just another gimmick in the endless, drawn-out “horse race” style coverage of US elections — where journalists, pollsters and pundits are constantly trying to see who is up and who is down.

But the American University history professor has answers for his critics — and a track record that’s hard to beat, having correctly called all but one election since 1984.

Lichtman pays no attention to opinion polls.

Instead, his predictions are based on a series of true-or-false propositions applied to the current presidential administration. If six or more of these “keys” are false, the election will go to the out-of-power challenger — in this case, Republican candidate Donald Trump.

One of the keys, for example, posits that the president’s party won seats in the most recent midterm elections. The Democrats actually lost control of the House in the 2022 midterms, meaning this particular key is termed “false,” tipping the scales toward Trump.

A few more keys break Trump’s way: President Joe Biden stepped down, meaning Democrats lost the key which determines the “incumbency,” a vital advantage.

Biden’s vice president and replacement as nominee, Kamala Harris, is surging on optimism among party faithful. But Lichtman rules that she does not qualify for another of the keys, which is being a charismatic, “once-in-a-generation” candidate in the style of Ronald Reagan or Franklin Roosevelt.

More points to Trump, yes. But after that the keys start breaking in rapid succession for Harris.

For example, the Biden administration’s massive environment and infrastructure legislation ticks the box for the key requiring a “major policy change” by the current White House.

Another key for Harris is the exit of fringe independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

She also satisfies the key demanding lack of major scandal.

Do the math and it turns out that only three keys are falling for Trump. But to be declared the presumptive winner, he would have needed six.

And there’s another key which could go Harris’s way, if the administration reaches a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza.

It’s a move that would likely require Democrats to push harder against the Israeli government — sure to cause strain among poll-obsessed advisors in a party trying to straddle a base that is heavily divided over the issue. Yet, a ceasefire would mean the Democrats actually delivered a policy achievement, Lichtman argues, and deliver one of the keys on foreign policy.

“I don’t like to speculate, because the devil is in the details, but that could be seen as a big success,” he said.

Critics of the “13 keys” home in on the speculative nature of some of the true-false propositions. What is a charismatic leader, for example?

Yet the sage of Bethesda, as some have dubbed him, is well-versed in arguing his case.

“I’ve been doing this for 40 years. I think I’ve heard every conceivable question,” he said. “‘Aren’t your keys subjective?’ I obviously have an answer to that — they’re not subjective, they’re judgmental.

“We’re dealing with human beings. Historians make judgments all the time, and the judgments are very tightly constrained.”

Amid the “noise” of national political punditry, Lichtman argues, presidential elections are a simple “vote up or down on the strength and performance of the White House party.”

In that way, his method is anti-horse race — focused on good governance rather than campaigns, since in reality “we forget virtually anything a candidate has to say.”

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Friday fired his human rights minister, Silvio Almeida, following claims that he sexually harassed several women, including a cabinet colleague.

The scandal, which caused outrage in Brazil, is the first of its kind involving a member of Lula’s government since the veteran leftist returned to power last year.

“Given the grave accusations against minister Silvio Almeida and after summoning him for a conversation… President Lula decided to remove the head of the human rights and citizenship ministry,” the presidency said in a statement.

“The president considers the possibility of the minister remaining in office untenable given the nature of the allegations,” the statement added.

In a later statement, Almeida said: “I asked President Lula to dismiss me.”

“It will give me a chance to prove my innocence and recover from this,” he said.

The Metropoles news site reported on Thursday that the women’s association Me Too Brasil had received complaints against Almeida from several women, including Racial Equality Minister Anielle Franco.

Me Too Brasil confirmed the report and said that the women in question had “received psychological and legal support.”

The federal police said Friday it would investigate the claims and the presidential ethics commission said it too had launched an inquiry.

Almeida, a 48-year-old lawyer and university professor who is considered one of Brazil’s leading intellectuals, had earlier rejected the allegations as “lies” aimed at tarnishing the image of “a black man who occupies a prominent position in public office.”

Franco, 40, is also black.

Writing on Instagram after Almeida’s dismissal, she said that it was “unacceptable to downplay or diminish acts of violence” and praised Lula’s “forceful action.”

Welcoming the expressions of solidarity she had received, she added: “We know how much women and girls suffer from harassment everyday, at work, in public transport, in schools and at home.”

On Friday, the UOL news site published the account of one of Almeida’s accusers, a university professor who said the minister groped her during a meal in 2019 in front of around 15 people.

“There were a lot of people, I was wearing a skirt and I remember his hand on my private parts,” she said, adding: “I felt ashamed.”

Before meeting Almeida on Friday, Lula issued a stern warning about possible cases of sexual harassment in his team.

“What I can say is that whoever practices harassment cannot remain in government,” he told Brazil’s Difusora Goiania radio station while emphasizing Almeida’s right to the presumption of innocence.

On Thursday, the government had acknowledged the “seriousness” of the claims levelled at the minister and vowed that they would be treated “with the rigour and speed that situations of possible violence against women demand.”

Almedia’s wife, Edneia Carvalho, with whom he has a one-year-old daughter, described the claims against the minister as “unfair” and “absurd” on Instagram.

While this is the first scandal involving alleged sexual misconduct by a member of Lula’s government, it is not the first time one of his ministers has been accused of a crime.

In June, the federal police recommended that Communications Minister Juscelino Filho be indicted for corruption and consorting with criminals.

Filho denied the allegations and so far has kept his job.

ABID: Severe flooding in west Africa has displaced nearly 950,000 people and disrupted children’s education at the start of the school year, international charity Save the Children said on Friday.

“Hundreds of thousands of children now displaced from their homes are facing disease, hunger from crop destruction, and disruption to their education, as schools have become crowded with fleeing families or damaged in the floods,” the NGO said.

Save the Children said around 950,000 people had been displaced — 649,184 in Niger, 225,000 in Nigeria and 73,778 in Mali. Niger’s government says more than 700,000 people have been left homeless, and 273 people have died since the rainy season started in June.

Neighbouring Nigeria has meanwhile seen 29 of its 36 states — mainly in the north — hit by rising waters of the River Niger and its major Benue tributary, with the country listing 200 deaths, Save the Children said. “According to Nigerian government data, over 115,265 hectares of farmland have also been damaged in a country with already high rates of food insecurity,” the NGO said.

The agency said one in every six children across Nigeria “faced hunger in June-August this year — a 25 per cent increase on the same period last year.” In Mali, whose government declared a state national disaster, more than half of those displaced are children, the NGO revealed.

Save the Children said climate change was making extreme weather and its consequences ever more serious and frequent, with Africa suffering disproportionally.

“These countries are already ravaged by conflict and insecurity, making it even harder to respond, said Vishna Shah-Little, regional advocacy, media and communications director for the agency in Western and Central Africa.

The genocide in Gaza entered its 12-month on Saturday with little sign of respite for the Palestinian territory or hope for Israeli hostages still held captive.

The chances of a truce appear slim, with both sides sticking doggedly to their positions, AFP reports.

Hamas’ October 7 gave Israel an excuse to spark the genocide. While the organization is demanding a complete Israeli withdrawal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that troops must remain on a key strip of land along the Gaza-Egypt border.

The United States, Qatar and Egypt have all been mediating to bring about a ceasefire in the region where Israel in Gaza has killed at least 40,939 people.

According to the United Nations human rights office, most of the dead are women and children.

However, the attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, including some hostages killed in captivity, according to official Israeli figures.

Of 251 hostages seized by Palestinian militants during the attack, 97 remain in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Scores were released during a one-week truce in November.

Israel’s announcement last Sunday that the bodies of six hostages, including a US-Israeli citizen, had been recovered shortly after being killed, sparked grief and anger in Israel.

Marking the anniversary, UN Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA) chief Philippe Lazzarini posted on X on Saturday: “Eleven months. Enough. No one can take this any longer. Humanity must prevail. Ceasefire now.”

International pressure to end the war was further underlined by Friday’s shooting dead in the West Bank of a Turkish-American activist demonstrating against Israeli settlements in the occupied territory.

The family of 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi has demanded an independent investigation into her death, saying on Saturday her life “was taken needlessly, unlawfully, and violently by the Israeli military”.

The UN rights office said Israeli forces killed Eygi with a “shot in the head”.

Ankara said she was killed by “Israeli occupation soldiers”, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the Israeli action as “barbaric”.

Washington called her death “tragic”, and has pressed its close ally Israel to investigate.

West Bank raids

Israeli settlements in the West Bank, where about 490,000 people live, are illegal under international law.

Since the October 7 attack, Israeli troops or settlers have killed more than 662 Palestinians in the West Bank, which Israel occupied in 1967, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Eygi’s death came on the day Israeli forces withdrew from a deadly 10-day raid in the West Bank city of Jenin, where AFP journalists reported residents returning home to widespread destruction.

The Jenin pullout came with Israel at loggerheads with the United States over talks to forge a truce in the Gaza war.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday “90 percent is agreed” and urged Israel and Hamas to finalise a deal.

But Netanyahu denied this, telling Fox News: “It’s not close.”

Hamas is demanding Israel’s complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, saying it agreed months ago to a proposal outlined by US President Joe Biden.

AFP reporters said several air strikes and shelling rocked the territory overnight and early Saturday.

Gaza’s civil defence agency and the Palestinian Red Crescent said an Israeli air strike killed four people near the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

The civil defence and a witness said an air strike that targeted a flat in Bureij camp killed another four.

And in Jabalia, an Israeli air strike killed four more Palestinians, civil defence officials said.

They added that a woman and a child were also killed in an air strike north of Gaza City.

Medics reported at least 33 Palestinians wounded in an air strike on a residential area in Beit Lahia and said they were being treated at Al-Awda, Kamal Adwan and Indonesian hospitals.

A video of a Muslim mother arguing with the principal of an Indian school has gone viral in which she is complaining about expelling her son from the school.

A school in northern India expelled a young student for bringing non-vegetarian biryani for his lunch, sparking an official investigation.

The incident happened in Uttar Pradesh’s Amroha district where a three-member investigation committee has been constituted to look into the matter.

In the footage, the principal can allegedly be heard saying, “Your child says that he wants to convert everyone to Islam by making them eat non-vegetarian food.”

The child believed to be between five and seven years old, brought meat biryani in his tiffin for lunch.

Principal Avnish Kumar Sharma denied the allegations, stating that the child had damaged a temple on school grounds and offered biryani to classmates, which upset other parents. “I called a parent-teacher meeting, but his mother accused me instead,” the principal told The Indian Express.

On allegations of the child’s intentions to “demolish temples” in the future, the distressed mother can be heard confronting the principal by saying he is responsible for verbally abusing her son and locking him in a room as punishment. She further revealed that her son had been facing religious discrimination in the school for the past three months, which she called the “Hindu-Muslim” thing.

The controversy has raised concerns over religious intolerance and discriminatory practices prevalent in India as incidents of cow vigilantism and lynching of Muslims have also been reported in the recent past.

A 20-year-old Pakistani man currently residing in Canada, identified as Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, was charged with planning a terrorist attack in New York City allegedly against the Jewish community.

Khan, aka Shahzeb Jadoon, is suspected to have been plotting the attack in support of Da’esh, as per the US Department of Justice on Friday.

The plan was allegedly to carry out a mass shooting at a Jewish centre in Brooklyn around the first anniversary of October 7 in the upcoming month, almost a year after the Hamas attack in Israel, after which Israel unleashed a genocide in Gaza.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland claimed that Khan’s objective was to kill “as many Jewish people as possible.”

The Department of Justice could not confirm whether Khan had secured legal representation.

The US authorities also revealed that Khan attempted to travel from Canada to the United States to carry out the attack using automatic and semi-automatic weapons.

However, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) confirmed that Khan was arrested in Ormstown, Quebec, and is due to appear in a court in Montreal on September 13.

The charges detail that Khan disclosed his plan to form an offline Daesh support cell to two undercover law enforcement officers as he instructed them to acquire specific ammunition, rifles and other equipment for the attack. He also identified specific sites for the planned attack.

Prosecutors stated that Khan chose New York City because of its large Jewish population.

If convicted, Khan could face up to 20 years in prison.

A man in America lost his life after surgeons mistakenly removed his liver instead of his spleen during surgery.

70-year-old William Bryan from Alabama had come to Florida with his wife for vacations when he suddenly felt severe pain in his gut. His wife Beverly took him to the hospital, where doctors conducted necessary tests and diagnosed a malfunctioning spleen while admitting him to the hospital.

However, during the surgery, doctors removed William’s liver instead of his spleen, causing massive blood loss and the patient’s death.

American media reported that after the doctors mistakenly removed William’s liver, they labelled the organ ‘spleen’ and told his wife that her husband’s spleen had grown to four times its normal size.

William’s wife decided to take legal action.

“My husband died while helpless on the operating room table by Dr Shaknovsky. I don’t want anyone else to die due to his incompetence at a hospital that should have known or knew he had previously made drastic, life-altering surgical mistakes.”

Bryan and Beverly were married for 33 years, and have three children and eight grandchildren.

A 14-year-old boy killed four people, including two students, and wounded nine more when he opened fire at a high school in the US state of Georgia on Wednesday, law enforcement said.

The suspected shooter — also a student at the school — had been brought to the FBI’s attention more than a year ago for threats to commit a school shooting, the agency said.

He was taken into custody after Wednesday’s shooting and will be tried as an adult on murder charges, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.

Two teachers were also among the dead.

After the latest chapter in America’s gun violence crisis — nearly 400 mass shootings this year alone, by one tally — people gathered at a sports field outside Apalachee High School, some forming a circle with their arms linked.

“Our school resource officer engaged him,” county sheriff Jud Smith told reporters, referring to law enforcement officers employed to work at US schools.

“The shooter quickly realized that if he did not give up that it would end with an OIS — an officer-involved shooting. He gave up, got on the ground, and the deputy took him into custody.”

Smith said police did not yet know if the shooter singled out specific people as targets, adding later that the nine wounded were expected to recover.

The two students killed were also 14 years old, authorities said.

‘Still not safe’

After the suspected shooter was brought to the attention of the FBI, the county sheriff’s office interviewed his father and the then 13-year-old suspect, who denied the threats, before flagging the child to school officials for monitoring.

Georgia Bureau of Investigation director Chris Hosey said the shooter used an “AR-platform style weapon” and that authorities were investigating how he brought the gun into the school.

Some in the school initially thought it was just another shooter drill, one student told AFP, referring to the exercises common in US schools.

“Everyone just thought it was a fake drill until my teacher said we didn’t get an email,” Alexsandra Romeo said.

“She got us all in a little corner and everyone was just hugging each other, I had some of my friends crying. Until two police officers came in with their guns and told us that this is not a drill and that we’re still not safe.”

Another student, 17-year-old Stephanie Folgar, described hearing “loud bangs” and panicking students hiding in the bathrooms and closet.

“It’s scary knowing that that could’ve been you,” she said.

One student told local media that he saw blood on the floor and a body as he was led out of the building by authorities.

The shooting occurred near the town of Winder, about 45 miles (70 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta, the state capital.

Earlier, school authorities were reported to have sent a message to parents saying they were enforcing a “hard lockdown after reports of gunfire.”

After the all-clear was given, parents were invited to the school to be reunited with their children, with long lines of vehicles visible outside.

Gun violence ‘epidemic’

School shootings have become a sadly regular occurrence in the United States, where about a third of adults own a firearm and regulations on purchasing even powerful military-style rifles are lax.

Polls show a majority of voters favour stricter controls on the use and purchase of firearms, but the powerful gun ownership lobby is opposed to additional restrictions, and lawmakers have repeatedly failed to act.

US President Joe Biden said he was mourning the dead.

“Students across the country are learning how to duck and cover instead of how to read and write. We cannot continue to accept this as normal,” he said.

Speaking at a campaign event in New Hampshire after the shooting, Vice President Kamala Harris said it was time to end the “epidemic of gun violence.”

Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump said the perpetrator of the shooting was a “sick and deranged monster.”

This year, there have been at least 384 mass shootings — defined as a shooting involving at least four victims, dead or wounded — across the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

At least 11,557 people have been killed in firearms violence in the United States this year, according to the GVA.