Powerful blast hits busy Mogadishu cafe during Euro final

Somali security officer stands guard at the scene of a suicide car explosion in front of Doorbin hotel in Mogadishu, on February 24, 2018. (AFP file photo)
Somali security officer stands guard at the scene of a suicide car explosion in front of Doorbin hotel in Mogadishu, on February 24, 2018. (AFP file photo)
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Updated 15 July 2024
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Powerful blast hits busy Mogadishu cafe during Euro final

Powerful blast hits busy Mogadishu cafe during Euro final
  • Several local media reports said the blast was caused by a suicide bomber or a car bomb but the information could not be verified

MOGADISHU: A powerful blast ripped through a popular cafe in the center of the Somali capital Mogadishu late Sunday, an AFP journalist said, with local media reporting the venue was packed with football fans watching the final of the Euro 2024 tournament.
It was not immediately known if there were casualties, but the journalist reported that firefighters, police and ambulances rushed to the scene of the explosion at the Top Coffee restaurant.
Police have cordoned off the area, which is close to the presidential palace compound known as Villa Somalia and was very busy at the time of the blast.
Images posted online showed a huge fireball and plumes of smoke billowing into the night sky over the city.
Several local media reports said the blast was caused by a suicide bomber or a car bomb but the information could not be verified.
The authorities have not yet made any public comment on the incident.
The Al-Qaeda linked Al-Shabab terrorist group has been waging a bloody insurgency against Somalia’s fragile federal government for more than 17 years and has carried out numerous bombings in Mogadishu and other parts of the country.
There had been a relative lull in attacks in recent months as the government presses on with an offensive against the Islamist militants.
But on Saturday, five inmates said to be Al-Shabab fighters were killed in a shootout with prison guards in an attempted jail break from the main prison in Mogadishu.
Three guards were also killed and 18 others wounded in the confrontation, prison officials said, after the prisoners managed to get hold of weapons.
Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has vowed “all-out” war against the terrorists and government troops have joined forces with local clan militias in a military campaign supported by an African Union force and US air strikes.
But the offensive has suffered setbacks, with Al-Shabab earlier this year claiming it had taken multiple locations in the center of the country.
Although driven out of the capital by AU forces in 2011, Al-Shabab still has a strong presence in rural Somalia.
It has carried out repeated attacks against political, security and civilian targets, mostly in Somalia but also in neighboring countries including Kenya.
Somalia last month called for the African Union to slow the planned withdrawal of its forces from the troubled country.
UN resolutions called for troop numbers in the AU peacekeeping mission, known as ATMIS, to be reduced to zero by December 31 with security handed over to the Somali army and police.
The third and penultimate phase was to see the departure of 4,000 soldiers out of a total 13,500 ATMIS troops by the end of June.
But, following a request from Somalia’s government to see only 2,000 troops leave in June and the remaining 2,000 in September, the AU Peace and Security Council said it “strongly supports... a phased approach” to the drawdown.
 

 


US says it had no role in ousting of Bangladesh’s Hasina

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina interacts with journalists in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Monday, Dec. 31, 2018. (AP)
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina interacts with journalists in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Monday, Dec. 31, 2018. (AP)
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US says it had no role in ousting of Bangladesh’s Hasina

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina interacts with journalists in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Monday, Dec. 31, 2018. (AP)
  • A report in the Economic Times newspaper in India on Sunday had cited Hasina as accusing the US of playing a role in ousting her because it wanted control over Bangladesh’s Saint Martin island in the Bay of Bengal

WASHINGTON: The United States had no role in ousting Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who recently quit her position and fled the South Asian nation, the White House said on Monday, calling allegations of US interference “simply false.”
“We have had no involvement at all. Any reports or rumors that the United States government was involved in these events is simply false,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press briefing when asked about reported claims of US involvement.
A report in the Economic Times newspaper in India on Sunday had cited Hasina as accusing the US of playing a role in ousting her because it wanted control over Bangladesh’s Saint Martin island in the Bay of Bengal. The newspaper said Hasina had conveyed that message to it through her close associates.
Hasina’s son, Sajeeb Wazed, in a post on X on Sunday, said she never made any such statement.
“We believe that the Bangladeshi people should determine the future of the Bangladeshi government and that’s where we stand,” the White House added.
An interim government in Bangladesh, led by Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus, was sworn in on Thursday with the aim of holding elections in the Asian nation.
Bangladesh was engulfed by demonstrations and violence after student protests last month against quotas that reserved a high portion of government jobs for certain groups escalated into a campaign to oust Hasina.
She had won a fourth straight term in January in an election that the opposition boycotted and which the US State Department said was not free and fair.
Hasina went to New Delhi after leaving Bangladesh, ending her uninterrupted rule of 15 years.
 

 


Trump’s interview with Musk on X platform hamstrung by tech issues, with many users unable to join

Trump’s interview with Musk on X platform hamstrung by tech issues, with many users unable to join
Updated 23 min 38 sec ago
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Trump’s interview with Musk on X platform hamstrung by tech issues, with many users unable to join

Trump’s interview with Musk on X platform hamstrung by tech issues, with many users unable to join

Donald Trump’s big return to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter did not begin as planned.
Trump and Elon Musk, X’s owner, were slated to have what the tech titan termed a “live conversation” at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. “Should be highly entertaining!” Musk posted ahead of the event.
But while more than 120,000 people joined the event hosted by Trump’s X account, many others received error messages and were unable to login ahead of the advertised live interview.
A message read, “Details not available” more than 15 minutes after the scheduled start time.
The conversation was intended to serve as a way for the former president to reach potentially millions of voters directly. It was also an opportunity for X, a platform that relies heavily on politics, to redeem itself after some struggles.
Notably, in May 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis used the platform as a way to officially announce his presidential bid, a disastrous rollout marred by technical glitches, overloaded by the more than 400,000 people who tried to dial in.
Ahead of his conversation with Trump, Musk posted on the platform that X was conducting “some system scaling tests” to handle what’s anticipated to be a high volume of participants.
The coming chat also prompted a cautionary response from Europe. Thierry Breton, a French business executive and commissioner for internal market of the European Union, warned Musk of possible “amplification of harmful content” by broadcasting his interview with Trump. In a letter posted on X, Breton urged Musk to “ensure X’s compliance” with EU law, including the Digital Services Act, adopted in 2022 to address a number of issues including disinformation.
In a statement, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung urged the EU to “mind their own business instead of trying to meddle in the US Presidential election.” He said the EU was “an enemy of free speech and has no authority of any kind to dictate how we campaign.”
Musk, who has described himself as a Democrat until a few years ago, endorsed Trump’s candidacy two days after the former president was wounded during an attempted assassination at a Pennsylvania rally last month.
Long before he endorsed Trump, Musk turned increasingly toward the right in his posts and actions on the platform, also using X to try to sway political discourse around the world. He’s gotten in a dustup with a Brazilian judge over censorship, railed against what he calls the “woke mind virus” and amplified false claims that Democrats are secretly flying in migrants to vote in US elections.
Musk has also reinstated previously banned accounts such as the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Trump, who was kicked off the platform — then known as Twitter — two days after the Jan. 6 violence, with the company citing “the risk of further incitement of violence.” By November 2022, Musk had bought the company, and Trump’s account was reinstated, although the former president refrained from tweeting until Monday, insisting that he was happier on his own Truth Social site, which he launched during the ban.
Hours ahead of his interview with Musk, Trump posted a two-and-a-half minute video to his X account, featuring video from his time in office, as well as audio of him saying one of his standard campaign lines referencing the legal cases that have mounted against him: “They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you, and I just happen to be standing in their way, and I will never be moving.”
But Trump’s audience on X is legions larger than on Truth Social, which became a publicly traded company earlier this year. Trump has just over 7.5 million followers on Truth Social, while his mostly dormant X account is followed by 88 million. Musk’s account, which will host the interview, has more than 193 million followers.
Trump’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a message as to whether he would cross-post his interview with Musk via his own accounts, including on X.
The former president has most recently posted on X only once, with a photo of his mug shot after he surrendered at an Atlanta jail a year ago on charges he conspired to overturn his election loss in the state.


21 months in prison for US student who threatened Jewish classmates

21 months in prison for US student who threatened Jewish classmates
Updated 13 August 2024
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21 months in prison for US student who threatened Jewish classmates

21 months in prison for US student who threatened Jewish classmates
  • Attorney General Merrick Garland highlighted the case at the time of Dai’s arrest as part of “a significant increase in the volume and frequency of threats against Jewish, Muslim and Arab communities across our country”

NEW YORK: A former Cornell University student was sentenced to 21 months in prison on Monday for threatening Jewish classmates.
Patrick Dai, who was suspended by the Ivy League school in Ithaca, New York, posted the threats anonymously on an online campus bulletin board three weeks after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
Dai pleaded guilty to one felony count of making threats and was sentenced to 21 months in prison and three years of supervised release by District Judge Brenda Sannes in Syracuse, New York.
“The defendant terrorized a campus community for days and horrified the nation at a very volatile time,” prosecutors said in their sentencing memo.
Lisa Peebles, Dai’s lawyer, told the court her 22-year-old client is “autistic” and is actually “pro-Israel.”
“In a misguided attempt to highlight Hamas’s genocidal beliefs and garner support for Israel,” Peebles said, he “made several posts on a campus-related website in the guise of an anti-Semite Hamas extremist.
“He believed, wrongly, that the posts would prompt a ‘blowback’ against what he perceived as anti-Israel media coverage and pro-Hamas sentiment on campus,” she said.
According to the Justice Department, Dai said he was “gonna shoot up 104 west,” a dining hall that mostly caters to Jewish students, and “stab” and “slit the throat” of any Jewish males he saw on campus.
Cornell canceled classes for a day in November following the threats.
Attorney General Merrick Garland highlighted the case at the time of Dai’s arrest as part of “a significant increase in the volume and frequency of threats against Jewish, Muslim and Arab communities across our country.”
Colleges across the United States were rocked for months by protests over Israel’s war in Gaza.


FBI investigating after Trump campaign says it was hacked by Iran

FBI investigating after Trump campaign says it was hacked by Iran
Updated 13 August 2024
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FBI investigating after Trump campaign says it was hacked by Iran

FBI investigating after Trump campaign says it was hacked by Iran
  • The Iranian government has denied that it hacked the Trump campaign

WASHINGTON: The US FBI said on Monday it was investigating after Donald Trump’s presidential campaign said its internal communications were hacked and blamed the Iranian government.
The former president said on Saturday that Microsoft had informed his campaign that Iran had hacked one of its websites. He said Iran was “only able to get publicly available information.”
The Iranian government has denied that it hacked the Trump campaign.
Trump’s campaign has pointed to a report on Friday by Microsoft researchers which indicated that Iranian government-linked hackers tried breaking into the account of a “high-ranking official” on a US presidential campaign in June.
The report added that the hackers took over an account belonging to a former political adviser and then used it to target the official. It did not provide further details on the targets’ identities.

 


Canadian commissioner resigns after Israel comments probe

Scholar Birju Dattani. (Twitter @bnaibrithcanada)
Scholar Birju Dattani. (Twitter @bnaibrithcanada)
Updated 13 August 2024
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Canadian commissioner resigns after Israel comments probe

Scholar Birju Dattani. (Twitter @bnaibrithcanada)
  • The probe’s findings, detailed in a report released on Monday, found that Dattani had omitted the name Mujahid Dattani in his background check forms, which he’d used in online activities and speaking engagements on the Middle East

OTTAWA: Canada’s new human rights commissioner resigned Monday — before ever starting the job — after concerns were raised by Jewish advocacy organizations over his past comments on Israel.
Scholar Birju Dattani was appointed to the role in June, and was set to being working last Thursday, but announced that day he would take a leave of absence while Justice Minister Arif Virani considered the results of an independent investigation.
On Monday, he said in an online post that he has “agreed to resign as Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, effective today.”
“I remain a steadfast believer in the Commission’s work, mandate, and its importance to our democracy,” he added.
The probe’s findings, detailed in a report released on Monday, found that Dattani had omitted the name Mujahid Dattani in his background check forms, which he’d used in online activities and speaking engagements on the Middle East.
The Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs pointed to a post under that name that compared Israel to Nazi Germany. Dattani told public broadcaster CBC it had been intended to generate a conversation.
The report found there was no evidence that Dattani, who was raised Hindu but converted to Islam, is anti-Semitic.
“We cannot find that Mr. Dattani harbored or harbors any beliefs that would be characterized as anti-Semitic or that he has demonstrated any biases (conscious or unconscious) toward Jews or Israelis,” it said.
However, the report concluded that Dattani should have been more forthcoming in the job application, and said he “deliberately de-emphasized the manner in which his academic work was critical of the State of Israel in respect of its treatment of Palestinians” in interviews and materials submitted to investigators.