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Blinken to head to UK for talks on Mideast

Blinken to head to UK for talks on Mideast
US State Secretary Antony Blinken is expected to discuss issues in Gaza with his UK counterpart, probably in light of the US leadership's hardline stance against Israeli PM Netanyahu's perceived moves to expand the war on Palestinians. (AFP/File)
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Updated 10 September 2024
AFP
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Blinken to head to UK for talks on Mideast

Blinken to head to UK for talks on Mideast
  • Britain and the US have cooperated in lockstep on most global issues, but PM Starmer has taken a harder line on Israel since taking office
  • Starmer has also dropped his predecessor’s plans to challenge the ICC's moves to seek the arrest of Israeli PM Netanyahu over war crimes raps
Updated 10 September 2024
AFP
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WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will head to London next week to discuss the Middle East and Ukraine, the State Department announced Saturday, ahead of a US visit by Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Blinken’s visit to London on Monday and Tuesday will be the senior-most by a US official since Starmer’s Labour Party won July elections, ending 14 years of Conservative rule.
Blinken will take part in a strategic dialogue “reaffirming our special relationship,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
He will discuss Asia as well as the Middle East and “our collective efforts to support Ukraine,” Miller said in a statement.
The White House earlier announced that Starmer will visit next Friday, his second trip to Washington since his election.
He met President Joe Biden at the White House on July 10, days after taking office, as Starmer attended a NATO summit in Washington.
Britain and the United States have cooperated in lockstep on most global issues, and Biden’s Democrats historically have been seen as closer to the Labour Party than the Conservatives.
Starmer, however, has taken a harder line on Israel since taking office, with his government announcing a suspension of some arms shipments, citing the risk that they could be used to violate humanitarian law.
The Labour government has also dropped its Conservative predecessor’s plans to challenge the right of the International Criminal Court to seek the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court and has opposed the bid to target Netanyahu, arguing that Israel has its own systems for accountability.
But the United States, Israel’s primary weapons supplier, did not criticize the arms decision, saying that Britain had its own process to make assessments.
 

Topics: War on Gaza Antony Blinken keir starmer

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Raids in Germany target Channel migrant smuggling ring

Raids in Germany target Channel migrant smuggling ring
Updated 15 sec ago
AFP
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Raids in Germany target Channel migrant smuggling ring

Raids in Germany target Channel migrant smuggling ring
Updated 15 sec ago
AFP
BERLIN: German police commandos carried out a series of pre-dawn raids Wednesday against an alleged Iraqi-Kurdish network accused of smuggling migrants to Britain.
More than 500 officers searched locations in multiple German cities in an operation coordinated with Europol and French security service, police said.
The network is accused of the “smuggling of irregular migrants from the Middle East and East Africa to France and the UK using ... low-quality inflatable boats,” German police said in a statement.
Police searched residential properties and storage facilities on the basis of search and arrest warrants issued by a French court in Lille, according to police.
The raids targeted properties in Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Grevenbroich, Bochum and other cities, including a refugee home in Essen, Germany’s Bild newspaper reported.
More than 20 French investigators and three Europol officials were assisting, police said.
The raids follow an investigation by Belgian, French and German authorities into another Iraqi-Kurdish smuggling network that led to 19 arrests earlier this year.
The suspects, all based in Germany, organized the purchase, storage and transport of inflatable boats to smuggle migrants from beaches near the French city of Calais to Britain, The Hague-based Europol said.
Migrant-smuggling via small boats has been on the rise since 2019 and two years later overtook the practice of hiding people in the back of lorries.
Last year, around 30,000 migrants and 600 boats reached Britain, according to Europol.

Gunman shoots at Sikh leader outside India’s Golden Temple, no one harmed

Gunman shoots at Sikh leader outside India’s Golden Temple, no one harmed
Updated 12 min 2 sec ago
Reuters
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Gunman shoots at Sikh leader outside India’s Golden Temple, no one harmed

Gunman shoots at Sikh leader outside India’s Golden Temple, no one harmed
  • Politician, Sukhbir Singh Badal, former deputy chief minister of Punjab state, was unharmed
  • The shooter, identified by police as Narain Singh, 68, was caught and arrested, police said 
Updated 12 min 2 sec ago
Reuters

MUMBAI: A gunman shot at a prominent Sikh politician outside the Golden Temple in northern India on Wednesday before police caught and arrested him, in a scare at the popular site that witnessed a bloody clash between Sikh militants and troops four decades ago.
The politician, Sukhbir Singh Badal, former deputy chief minister of Punjab state, was unharmed.
The shooter, identified by police as Narain Singh, 68, was seen in TV footage from news agency ANI walking to the entrance of the temple in Amritsar city, the holiest shrine for Sikhs, and stealthily removing a gun from his pocket to fire at Badal.
He was stopped and pushed away by a policeman in plainclothes who was standing next to Badal, but not before he fired a stray shot, which did not hit anyone, police said.
“Due to the alertness and deployment of our police, this attack attempt was foiled,” Amritsar Police Commissioner Gurpreet Singh Bhullar told reporters, adding that the gunman had been arrested.
The reason for the attack was not immediately clear.
Badal, a former ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, was sitting outside the Golden Temple doing a penance ritual imposed on him by the Akal Takht, Sikhism’s highest body.
Sikhism is one of the country’s main religions, and Sikhs form nearly 2 percent of India’s 1.4 billion population.
In 1984, then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sent the military into the Golden Temple to evict armed Sikh separatist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his supporters, infuriating Sikhs around the world.
A few months later, Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards at her home in New Delhi.

Topics: Golden Temple

Japanese court convicts Australian who says she was tricked into smuggling drugs

Japanese court convicts Australian who says she was tricked into smuggling drugs
Updated 26 min 44 sec ago
AP
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Japanese court convicts Australian who says she was tricked into smuggling drugs

Japanese court convicts Australian who says she was tricked into smuggling drugs
Updated 26 min 44 sec ago
AP

CHIBA: A Japanese court on Wednesday sentenced an Australian woman who says she was tricked amphetamines into the country to six years in prison, despite accepting her testimony that she was the victim of an online romance scam.
The Chiba District Court said it found Donna Nelson from Perth, Australia, guilty of violating the stimulants control and customs laws. It ordered her to pay a fine of 1 million yen ($6,671) in addition to serving a prison term.
Nelson was arrested at Japan’s Narita International Airport just outside Tokyo on Jan. 3, 2023 when customs officials found about 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of phenylaminopropane, a stimulant, hidden under a false bottom in a suitcase she was carrying as checked luggage.
Nelson, 58, told the court that she did not know that drugs were hidden in the suitcase and that she was carrying them for a man she thought she loved and hoped to marry.
The man, whom she met online in 2020, told her he was the Nigerian owner of a fashion business. In 2023, he paid to travel to Japan via Laos, and asked her to collect dress samples from an acquaintance in Laos, her lawyers said.
She was supposed to meet the man in Japan but he never showed up, according to prosecutors.
Nelson has already been in custody for nearly two years. The court said 430 days of that will be counted toward her sentence.
Presiding Judge Masakazu Kamakura said that although Nelson was decieved, she had a sense that something was wrong with the arrangement and that something illegal could be hidden in the suitcase, and she could have stopped.
However, the judge said there was room for sympathy and imposed a shorter sentence than would be typical for the amount of drugs she was carrying.
Prosecutors demanded 10 years in prison and a fine of 3 million yen (about $20,000) in their closing argument last month.
Nelson’s lawyer Rie Nishida said the ruling was unjust and did not make sense, and that she planned to appeal.
On Wednesday, Nelson dropped her head and seen sobbing as she listened to the verdict in the witness seat in front of a panel of judges. One of her daughters, Kristal Hilaire, was also seen wiping away tears as she looked on from her seat in the audience.
Several other family members who attended earlier sessions, seeing Nelson for the first time since her arrest nearly two years ago, returned home ahead of the verdict.

Topics: Japan Australia

UK’s David Lammy: hand of Russia seen in many world conflicts at present

UK’s David Lammy: hand of Russia seen in many world conflicts at present
Updated 04 December 2024
Reuters
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UK’s David Lammy: hand of Russia seen in many world conflicts at present

UK’s David Lammy: hand of Russia seen in many world conflicts at present
Updated 04 December 2024
Reuters

BRUSSELS: Russia’s involvement can be seen in many of the wars currently taking place across the world, said British Foreign Minister David Lammy at a NATO meeting on Wednesday, as he urged NATO allies to ‘get serious’ over defense spending.
“We are living in dangerous times,” said Lammy.
“And as we look across the world with war here on our continent in Europe, with the tremendous aggression that we are seeing across the Middle East with the hand of Iran so present in the Middle East and with this rising conflict in Sudan and now in Syria, there is one country with its hand in so much of it, and that is Russia,” he added.

Topics: UK Russia Syria Ukraine

New UN aid chief vows ‘ruthlessness’ to prioritize spending as funding for world’s crises shrinks

New UN aid chief vows ‘ruthlessness’ to prioritize spending as funding for world’s crises shrinks
Updated 04 December 2024
AP
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New UN aid chief vows ‘ruthlessness’ to prioritize spending as funding for world’s crises shrinks

New UN aid chief vows ‘ruthlessness’ to prioritize spending as funding for world’s crises shrinks
  • The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is issuing its global appeal for 2025
Updated 04 December 2024
AP

GENEVA: The new head of the UN humanitarian aid agency says it will be “ruthless” when prioritizing how to spend money, a nod to challenges in fundraising for civilians in war zones like Gaza, Sudan, Syria and Ukraine.
Tom Fletcher, a longtime British diplomat who took up the UN post last month, said his agency is asking for less money in 2025 than this year. He said it wants to show “we will focus and target the resources we have,” even as crises grow more numerous, intense and long-lasting.
His agency, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, on Wednesday issued its global appeal for 2025, seeking $47 billion to help 190 million people in 32 countries — though it estimates 305 million worldwide need help.
“The world is on fire, and this is how we put it out,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
The office and many other aid groups, including the international Red Cross, have seen donations shrink in recent years for longtime trouble spots like Syria, South Sudan, the Middle East and Congo and newer ones like Ukraine and Sudan. Aid access has been difficult in some places, especially Sudan and Gaza.
The office’s appeal for $50 billion for this year was only 43 percent fulfilled as of last month. One consequence of that shortfall was a 80 percent reduction in food aid for Syria, which has seen a sudden escalation in fighting in recent days.
Such funds go to UN agencies and more than 1,500 partner organizations.
The biggest asks for 2025 are for Syria — a total of $8.7 billion for needs both within the country and for neighbors that have taken in Syrian refugees — as well as Sudan at a total of $6 billion, the “Occupied Palestinian Territory” at $4 billion, Ukraine at about $3.3 billion and Congo at nearly $3.2 billion.
Fletcher said his office needs to be “ruthless” in choosing to reach people most in need.
“I choose that word carefully, because it’s a judgment call — that ruthlessness — about prioritizing where the funding goes and where we can have the greatest impact,” he said. “It’s a recognition that we have struggled in previous years to raise the money we need.”
In response to questions about how much President-elect Donald Trump of the United States — the UN’s biggest single donor — will spend on humanitarian aid, Fletcher said he expects to spend “a lot of time” in Washington over the next few months to talk with the new administration.
“America is very much on our minds at the moment,” he said, acknowledging some governments “will be more questioning of what the United Nations does and less ideologically supportive of this humanitarian effort” laid out in the new report.

Topics: UN

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Japanese court convicts Australian who says she was tricked into smuggling drugs
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