Another top donor says it will resume funding the UN agency for Palestinians as Gaza hunger grows

Mourners watch as medical personnel transport the bodies of 47 Palestinians, that were taken and later released by Israel, during a mass funeral in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on March 7, 2024, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)
Mourners watch as medical personnel transport the bodies of 47 Palestinians, that were taken and later released by Israel, during a mass funeral in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on March 7, 2024, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)
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Updated 10 March 2024
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Another top donor says it will resume funding the UN agency for Palestinians as Gaza hunger grows

Another top donor says it will resume funding the UN agency for Palestinians as Gaza hunger grows
  • Overall, the ministry said, at least 30,878 Palestinians have been killed since the war began

JERUSALEM: Another top donor to the UN agency aiding Palestinians said Saturday that it would resume funding, weeks after more than a dozen countries halted hundreds of millions of dollars in support in response to Israeli allegations against the organization.
Sweden’s reversal came as a ship bearing tons of humanitarian aid was making preparations to leave Cyprus for Gaza after international donors launched a sea corridor to supply the besieged territory facing widespread hunger after five months of war.
Sweden’s decision followed similar ones by the European Union and Canada as the UN agency known as UNRWA warns that it could collapse and leave Gaza’s already desperate population of more than 2 million people with even less medical and other assistance.
“The humanitarian situation in Gaza is devastating and the needs are acute,” development minister Johan Forssell said in Sweden’s announcement, adding that UNRWA had agreed to increased transparency and stricter oversight and controls. Sweden will give UNRWA half of the $38 million funding it promised for this year, with more to come.
Israel had accused 12 of UNRWA’s thousands of employees of participating in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel that killed 1,200 people and took about 250 others hostage. Countries including the United States quickly suspended funding to UNRWA worth about $450 million, almost half its budget for the year. The UN has launched investigations, and UNRWA has been agreeing to outside audits to win back donor support.
On the eve of Ramadan, hungry Gaza residents scrambled for packages of food supplies dropped by US and Jordanian military planes — a method of delivery that humanitarian groups have called deeply inadequate compared to deliveries by ground. But the daily number of aid trucks entering Gaza since the war has been far below the 500 that entered before Oct. 7 because of Israeli restrictions and security issues.
People dashed through devastated neighborhoods of Gaza City as the parachuting aid descended. “I have orphans, I want to feed them!” one woman cried.
“The issue of aid is brutal and no one accepts it,” said another resident, Momen Mahra, claiming that most of the airdropped aid falls into the sea. “We want better methods.”
The US military said that its planes on Saturday airdropped more than 41,000 “meal equivalents” and 23,000 bottles of water into northern Gaza, the hardest part of the enclave to access.
The Health Ministry in Gaza said that two more people, including a 2-month-old infant, had died as a result of malnutrition, raising the total number of people who died from hunger to 25. Ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qidra said the toll included only people brought to hospitals.
Overall, the ministry said, at least 30,878 Palestinians have been killed since the war began. It doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its tallies, but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government, and its figures from previous wars have largely matched those of the UN and independent experts.
The opening of the sea delivery corridor, along with the airdrops, showed increasing frustration with Gaza’s humanitarian crisis and a new international willingness to work around Israeli restrictions. The sea corridor is backed by the EU together with the United States, the United Arab Emirates and other involved countries, and the European Commission has said that UN agencies and the Red Cross will also play a role.
The ship belonging to Spain’s Open Arms aid group was expected to make a pilot voyage to test the corridor as early as this weekend. The ship has been waiting at Cyprus’s port of Larnaca for permission. Israel has said it welcomed the maritime corridor, but cautioned that it would need security checks.
Open Arms founder Oscar Camps told The Associated Press that the ship pulling a barge with 200 tons of rice and flour would take two to three days to arrive at an undisclosed location where the group World Central Kitchen was constructing a pier to receive it. The group has 60 food kitchens throughout Gaza to distribute aid, he said.
US President Joe Biden has announced a plan to build a temporary pier in Gaza to help deliver aid, underscoring how the US has to go around Israel, its main Middle East ally and the top recipient of US military aid. Israel accuses Hamas of commandeering some aid deliveries.
United States officials said it will likely be weeks before the Gaza pier is operational. The executive director of the US arm of medical charity Doctors Without Borders, Avril Benoit, in a statement criticized the US plan as a “glaring distraction from the real problem: Israel’s indiscriminate and disproportionate military campaign and punishing siege.”
Sigrid Kaag, the UN senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, has said air and sea deliveries can’t make up for a shortage of supply routes on land.
Meanwhile, efforts to reach a ceasefire before Ramadan appeared stalled. Hamas said Thursday that its delegation had left Cairo until next week.
International mediators had hoped to alleviate some of the immediate crisis with a six-week ceasefire, which would have seen Hamas release some of the Israeli hostages it’s holding, Israel release some Palestinian prisoners and aid groups be given access for a major influx of assistance into Gaza.
Palestinian militants are believed to be holding around 100 hostages and the remains of 30 others captured during the Oct. 7 attack. Several dozen hostages were freed in a weeklong November truce.
 

 


Trump nominates Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary

Trump nominates Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary
Updated 4 sec ago
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Trump nominates Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary

Trump nominates Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida: President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday that he is nominating Fox News host and Army veteran Pete Hegseth to serve as his defense secretary.
Hegseth deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and unsuccessfully ran for Senate in Minnesota in 2012 before joining Fox News.
“With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice — Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down,” Trump said in a statement. “Nobody fights harder for the Troops, and Pete will be a courageous and patriotic champion of our ‘Peace through Strength’ policy.”


Senegal ex-president makes political comeback from afar

Senegal ex-president makes political comeback from afar
Updated 54 min 26 sec ago
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Senegal ex-president makes political comeback from afar

Senegal ex-president makes political comeback from afar
  • He has accused Sall’s administration of leaving behind “catastrophic” public finances and manipulating financial figures given to international partners, which the previous leaders deny

DAKAR: Senegal’s former leader Macky Sall, who earlier this year sparked one of the worst crises in decades by delaying the presidential election, is seeking a controversial comeback in Sunday’s snap parliamentary elections.
Sall left office in April after 12 years in power, handing over the reins to his successor Bassirou Diomaye Faye and departing Senegal for Morocco.
The ex-president is now leading a newly formed opposition coalition from abroad, raising questions over the motives behind his return to the political fray and what it could mean for the West African country.
Sall’s longtime political foe, current Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, has repeatedly suggested that members of the former administration, including Sall, could be brought before the courts.
He has accused Sall’s administration of leaving behind “catastrophic” public finances and manipulating financial figures given to international partners, which the previous leaders deny.
Political science professor Maurice Soudieck Dione sees Sall’s return as an attempt “to get a grip on the political game in order to protect his own interests” in the event of any “political recriminations.”
There is also a “personal dimension around him not having had his fill of power,” Dione suggested, pointing out that Sall had for a time toyed with the idea of running for a third presidential term.
Well respected on the international stage, Sall’s final years in power were marred by a political standoff with Sonko that led to dozens of deaths and hundreds of arrests.
His last-minute decision to postpone the presidential election in February then sparked one of Senegal’s worst crises in decades.
The thirst for change among a hard-pressed population saw Sall’s hand-picked successor, Amadou Ba, crushed at the ballot box by Sonko’s former deputy Faye.
Faye and Sonko had been released from prison just ten days before the vote.
Faye dissolved the opposition-dominated parliament in September, paving the way for legislative elections.

In returning to politics so soon, Sall has broken with the restraint normally adopted by former presidents in Senegal.
As the lead candidate for the Takku Wallu Senegal coalition, Sall justified his comeback in a five-page letter, citing the need to defend the “achievements” of his time in power.
He warned of the looming political and economic “dangers” faced by Senegal after months of “calamitous governance” by the new administration.
Presidential spokesman Ousseynou Ly decried Sall’s “indecency” on social media, blaming the former head of state for years of what he described as deadly unrest, debt and corruption.
As the election approaches, Sonko is traveling the length and breadth of Senegal promising economic transformation to excited crowds, while Sall addresses less rowdy audiences via speakerphone.
The former president can, officially, return to the country whenever he chooses.
“If he were to return to the country, we would ensure his safety because he is a citizen and former President of the Republic,” government spokesman Amadou Moustapha Ndieck Sarre told the Senegalese radio station RFM.
“But if he returns and the courts decide to arrest him, neither the prime minister nor the head of state can do anything about it,” he said.
Sonko has recently spoken of “high treason” in relation to what he termed the “catastrophic” state of public finances left by Sall’s administration.
High treason is the only case in which a president can be charged.
Legally, this would be “very complicated,” said El Hadji Mamadou Mbaye, a political science lecturer and researcher at the University of Saint-Louis.
Sall is returning to politics because “in reality he never wanted to leave power,” Mbaye said. “He feels indispensable.”
But “I don’t think the Senegalese are ready to forgive,” he added.
“If he had returned, the campaign would have been much more eventful, bordering on violent,” said political science professor Dionne.
“He had to carry out a very harsh crackdown on the opposition,” he added, referring to the years of turmoil.
“The wounds have not healed.”
 

 


Venezuela crackdown helped avert ‘civil war’: attorney general

Venezuela crackdown helped avert ‘civil war’: attorney general
Updated 13 November 2024
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Venezuela crackdown helped avert ‘civil war’: attorney general

Venezuela crackdown helped avert ‘civil war’: attorney general

CARACAS: Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab defended the state’s crackdown on opposition supporters after disputed July elections, telling AFP the authorities’ actions helped avert a “civil war.”
The proclamation of authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro as the winner of the July 28 election triggered widespread protests.
The opposition, which had been tipped by polls for an easy win, had published detailed polling-station-level results which showed its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia winning by a landslide.
Twenty-eight people, including two police officers, were killed and 200 injured in the unrest, during which around 2,400 people were arrested.
Saab claimed the violence that marred the protests had been “premeditated.”
“There was an attempt to trigger a civil war,” he said.
“The plan consisting in claiming there was fraud in order to generate a terrorist act. If we had not acted as we did at that moment Venezuela would have been gripped by civil war,” he told AFP in an interview Monday at his office in Caracas.
He denied the security forces had any responsibility for the deaths of demonstrators.
A September 4 report into the killings by Human Rights Watch (HRW) pointed the finger at Venezuelan security forces and pro-government militias known as “colectivos” in some of the deaths.
One of the victims was a 15-year-old boy, Isaias Jacob Fuenmayor Gonzalez, who sustained a gunshot to the neck while taking part in a protest in Maracaibo, Venezuela’s second-biggest city, according to HRW.
Saab, whose office walls are lined with portraits of Venezuelan independence hero Simon Bolivar, late Venezuelan socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez, his late Cuban ally Fidel Castro and Maduro, denied allegations his office was under Maduro’s thumb.
Appointed attorney general in 2017, he was re-elected to the position earlier this month by a parliament stacked with Maduro loyalists.
He cited among his achievements increased investment in community policing and 600 convictions handed down to police officers for human rights violations.
He also pointed to nearly 22,000 convictions for corruption under his watch and claimed to have dismantled “34 corruption systems” at graft-ridden state oil giant Petroleos de Venezuela.
Five of the last eight oil ministers are in prison or fled the country.
Saab claimed that during the post-election violence “around 500” buildings, including schools, clinics and town halls were damaged by protesters.
He denied that those detained were political prisoners, accusing them of “trying to burn” and “shooting at” demonstrators, without providing any evidence of his claim.
“A political prisoner is someone who has been detained because of his political ideas and who uses peaceful tactics... These people took weapons to (try to) overthrow a legitimately constituted government,” he accused.
The opposition says many of those arrested were arbitrarily arrested.
Venezuela’s Foro Penal rights NGO says some 1,800 people remain behind bars over two months later, including 69 teenagers.
Saab denied that children were being held, but said that the law allowed for the arrest of minors aged between 14 and 17.
He refused to be drawn on how many protesters were still in custody, saying only that “many have been freed.”
And he denied claims by the families of some of the prisoners that their loved ones had been tortured.
Only a handful of countries, including Russia, have recognized Maduro’s claim to have won a third six-year term.
But opposition protests have largely petered out since September, when Gonzalez Urrutia went into exile in Spain after a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Saab said the 75-year-old former diplomat would be “automatically detained” if he returned to Venezuela.
Saab also said that opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who has been in hiding since the election, was under investigation but refused to say whether a warrant had been issued for her arrest.


US bans flights to Haiti as gang violence rages

US bans flights to Haiti as gang violence rages
Updated 13 November 2024
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US bans flights to Haiti as gang violence rages

US bans flights to Haiti as gang violence rages

PORT-AU-PRINCE: The United States on Tuesday banned all civilian flights to Haiti for a month, a day after a jetliner was shot at on approach to the capital and as a new prime minister took the reins of a nation ravaged by poverty and gang violence.
The US Federal Aviation Administration’s move came after a Spirit Airlines jetliner arriving from Florida in Port-au-Prince was hit by gunfire and had to reroute to the Dominican Republic.
Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime was sworn in on Monday, replacing outgoing premier Garry Conille, who was appointed in May but became embroiled in a power struggle with the country’s unelected transitional council.
On Tuesday, Haiti remained cut off from the rest of the world, with its main airport closed and bursts of gunfire ringing out in several neighborhoods of the capital.
Many stores and schools were shuttered as people feared more attacks by the powerful and well-armed gangs that control 80 percent of the city, even though a Kenyan-led international force has been deployed to help the outgunned Haitian police restore order.
Violent crime in the capital city remains high, with gang members routinely targeting civilians and robberies, rapes and kidnappings are rampant.
The attack on the Spirit Airlines aircraft saw one flight attendant suffer minor injuries. Images posted online appeared to show several bullet holes inside the plane.
The transitional council, aiming to put Haiti on a path to voting in 2026, had been tasked with stabilizing a country that has no president or parliament and last held elections in 2016.
The United States on Tuesday called on Haiti’s leaders to put personal interests aside and concentrate on getting the country back on its feet.
“The acute and immediate needs of the Haitian people mandate that the transitional government prioritize governance over the competing personal interests of political actors,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
Haiti has not had a president since the assassination of Jovenel Moise in 2021.
The Caribbean nation has long struggled with political instability, poverty, natural disasters and gang violence.
But conditions sharply worsened at the end of February when armed groups launched coordinated attacks in the capital, saying they wanted to overthrow then-prime minister Ariel Henry.
Despite the arrival of the Kenyan-led support mission in June, violence has continued to soar.
A recent United Nations report said more than 1,200 people were killed in Haiti from July through September, with persistent kidnappings and sexual violence against women and girls.
The report said the gangs were digging trenches, using drones and stockpiling weapons as they change tactics to confront the Kenyan-led police force.
Gang leaders have strengthened defenses for the zones they control and placed gas cylinders and Molotov cocktail bombs ready to use against police operations.


Climate cash should also go to nuclear, says UN atomic chief

Climate cash should also go to nuclear, says UN atomic chief
Updated 13 November 2024
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Climate cash should also go to nuclear, says UN atomic chief

Climate cash should also go to nuclear, says UN atomic chief
  • International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said he wanted countries from Kenya to Malaysia to go for nuclear, while denying he was pushing for an “irresponsible race” toward civil atomic power

BAKU: The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog said Tuesday that atomic power should also be allowed to tap into climate change funds.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said he wanted countries from Kenya to Malaysia to go for nuclear, while denying he was pushing for an “irresponsible race” toward civil atomic power.

“It should. Already at COP28 in Dubai the international community — not just nuclear countries — agreed that nuclear energy needs to be accelerated.
We need to give ourselves the means to make things happen.
The dialogue with international financial institutions has started in a very positive way. I was at the World Bank this summer, and tomorrow we will meet with the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development), as well as the Development Bank of Latin America.
Various financing bodies are beginning to see that markets are pushing in this direction.
We are obviously not a commercial lobby (but) a regulatory agency for everything related to nuclear safety, security, and non-proliferation. We are here to provide assurances and to oversee projects.”

“There are cultural, political and ideological barriers. We are coming out of decades of a negative narrative about nuclear, but it has to happen. I am the first to want to see results straight away.”

“That would be a very good thing. There are many countries — such as Ghana, Kenya and Morocco — that are interested in small modular reactors, for example, and they approach us saying, ‘For us, this would be a good solution.’
Others, like those in Eastern Europe, could benefit from European funding and for whom energy security is crucial in reducing dependency on certain suppliers. So it depends on the model. In Asia, we have Malaysia, the Philippines... countries that genuinely need this.”

“Obviously, the agency does not endorse or promote programs or projects that lack the institutional and technological fabric needed.
We have development models. The United Arab Emirates is a very, very interesting case. It’s a country with financial resources but that initially had absolutely no infrastructure, nuclear regulations etc.
We have established programs for newcomers to guide them step-by-step, through 19 chapters, until they establish nuclear capability.”
That’s what we have done. We are not going crazy, in an irresponsible race toward civil nuclear power. But there are a lot of things we can do.”