Biden says ending ban on Ukraine’s use of long-range weapons being worked out
Biden says ending ban on Ukraine’s use of long-range weapons being worked out/node/2570876/world
Biden says ending ban on Ukraine’s use of long-range weapons being worked out
US President Joe Biden delivers remarks during a visit to the United Association Local 190 Training Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, September 6, 2024. (Reuters)
Biden says ending ban on Ukraine’s use of long-range weapons being worked out
The US has been reluctant to supply or sanction the use of weapons that could strike targets deep inside in Russia for fear it would escalate the conflict.
Updated 11 September 2024
Reuters
US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that his administration was “working that out now” when asked if the US would lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long range weapons in its war against Russia.
The US has been reluctant to supply or sanction the use of weapons that could strike targets deep inside in Russia for fear it would escalate the conflict.
Kyiv’s other allies have been supplying weapons, but with restrictions on how and when they can be used inside Russia, out of concern such strikes could prompt retaliation that draws NATO countries into the war or provokes a nuclear conflict.
Sources told Reuters last week that the US was close to an agreement to give Ukraine such weapons, but that Kyiv would need to wait several months as the US works through technical issues ahead of any shipment.
Pakistan suspends train services in the country’s southwest after deadly train station bombing
Suicide bombing over the weekend killed 26 people, including soldiers and railway staff
Oil- and mineral-rich Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest but also least populated province
Updated 38 sec ago
AP
QUETTA, Pakistan: Pakistan’s railways suspended all train services on Monday to and from a restive southwestern province where a suicide bombing at a train station over the weekend killed 26 people, including soldiers and railway staff. The train services would be suspended for four days for security reasons, according to a statement from Pakistan Railways. The attack, claimed by the separatist Baloch Liberation Army struck the station in the city of Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, on Saturday. At least 62 people were also wounded in the bombing, officials said. The provincial government also declared a three-day mourning period in solidarity with the families of the victims and said that security has been stepped up and vowed to hit back “with full force” against the separatists, according to Sarfraz Bugti, the province’s chief minister. Bugti spoke after meeting with Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, who traveled to Quetta on Sunday to be briefed about the situation. Naqvi’s office said in a statement that authorities would “take decisive steps to crush the terrorists” and support the local Balochistan government in dealing with the “scourge of terrorism.” Train services are a major part of Balochistan’s economy — hundreds of people travel to and from Quetta to other parts of the country every day. Trains also transport food and other items. Saturday’s attack took place when about 100 passengers were waiting for a train to leave the Quetta station for the garrison city of Rawalpindi, police had said. In its claim of responsibility, the separatist BLA said it targeted Pakistani troops. The attack was the deadliest since August, when separatists killed more than 50 people in multiple coordinated attacks on passenger buses, police and security forces across Balochistan. The oil- and mineral-rich Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest but also least populated province. It is a hub for the country’s ethnic Baloch minority whose members say they face discrimination and exploitation by the central government. Balochistan has for years been the scene of a long-running insurgency, with several separatist groups staging attacks, targeting mainly security forces in their quest for independence. The province also has an array of militant groups that are active there. The separatists also target Chinese nationals working in Pakistan as part of Beijing’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, an initiative that has built power plants, roads, railroads and ports around the world and is a major part of China’s push to play a larger role in global affairs Last month, a suicide bomber dispatched by BLA targeted a convoy with Chinese nationals outside the country’s largest airport in the port city of Karachi, killing two Chinese workers and wounding eight people. Authorities claim they have arrested the mastermind of that attack in a raid in Balochistan.
Thousands flee as fourth typhoon in a month hits Philippines
Typhoon Toraji hit near Dilasag town, about 220 kilometers northeast of the capital, Manila
After Toraji, a tropical depression could also potentially strike the region as early as Thursday night
Updated 11 November 2024
AFP
MANILA: Thousands of people sought shelter and ports shut down in the Philippines on Monday, officials said, as the disaster-weary nation was struck by another typhoon — the fourth in less than a month.
Typhoon Toraji hit near Dilasag town, about 220 kilometers (140 miles) northeast of the capital, Manila, the national weather agency said.
“We’re getting hit with strong winds and heavy rain. Some trees are being toppled and power has been cut since yesterday,” Merwina Pableo, civil defense chief of Dinalungan town near Dilasag, said.
Rescuers said around 7,000 people were moved from coastal areas as well as flood-prone and landslide-prone areas in Aurora and Isabela, the first two provinces to be struck before Toraji plowed inland to the mountainous interior of the main island of Luzon.
In all, the government ordered 2,500 villages to be evacuated on Sunday, though the national disaster office does not have the total number of evacuees as of Monday.
In the landfall area of Dilasag, school teacher Glenn Balanag, 31, filmed the onslaught of the howling 130 kilometers an hour winds, which violently shook coconut trees around his rural home.
Tropical cyclone bulletin released by the Philippine weather bureau PAGASA on Sunday.
“Big trees are falling and we heard the roofs of some houses were damaged. The rain is continuing and a river nearby is rising,” he said.
The national weather agency warned of severe winds and “intense to torrential” rainfall exceeding 200 millimeters (eight inches) across the north of the country, along with a “moderate to high risk of a storm surge” — giant waves up to three meters (10 feet) high on the north coast.
Schools and government offices were shut in areas expected to be hit hardest by the latest typhoon.
Nearly 700 passengers were stranded at ports on or near the typhoon’s path, according to a coast guard tally on Monday, with the weather service warning that “sea travel is risky for all types or tonnage of vessels.”
“All mariners must remain in port or, if underway, seek shelter or safe harbor as soon as possible until winds and waves subside,” it added.
Aurora and Isabela officials said the main impact appeared to be downed trees and power pylons that blocked major roads.
“I don’t want to send people out yet to investigate. I do not want them to be caught out by powerful gusts,” said Constante Foronda, Isabela’s disaster response chief.
The typhoon was forecast to blow out to the South China Sea late Monday, the weather service said.
Aurora provincial disaster response chief Elson Egargue said he pushed out crews to clear roads after Toraji left the province in early afternoon.
After Toraji, a tropical depression could also potentially strike the region as early as Thursday night, weather forecaster Veronica Torres said.
Tropical Storm Man-yi, currently east of Guam, may also threaten the Philippines next week, she added.
Toraji came on the heels of three cyclones in less than a month that killed 159 people.
On Thursday, Typhoon Yinxing slammed into the country’s north coast, damaging houses and buildings.
A 12-year-old girl was crushed to death in one incident.
Before that, Severe Tropical Storm Trami and Super Typhoon Kong-rey together left 158 people dead, the national disaster agency said, with most of that tally attributed to Trami.
About 20 big storms and typhoons hit the archipelago nation or its surrounding waters each year.
A recent study showed that storms in the Asia-Pacific region are increasingly forming closer to coastlines, intensifying more rapidly and lasting longer over land due to climate change.
Japan’s parliament reelects struggling leader Ishiba as prime minister
Ishiba’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its junior partner Komeito lose majority in the Lower House
Ishiba beat top opposition leader Yoshihiko Noda 221-160 in the first runoff in 30 years
Updated 17 min 16 sec ago
AP
TOKYO: Japan’s parliament reelected Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Monday after his governing coalition suffered the worst election loss in more than a decade.
Ishiba’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its junior partner Komeito together lost their majority in the 465-seat Lower House, the more powerful of Japan’s two-house parliament, in the Oct. 27 election due to continued voter outrage over financial misconduct by his party and its lukewarm response.
A special parliamentary session convened Monday to pick a new leader in a vote required within 30 days of a general election. In the past, these votes did not attract as much attention because an LDP leader was virtually assured to be prime minister. Ishiba beat top opposition leader Yoshihiko Noda 221-160 in the first runoff in 30 years.
Most of his previous Cabinet members will be reappointed, but Ishiba will have to replace three who lost their seats or were affected by the election results.
Since the election loss, Ishiba has refused to step down, saying is willing to cooperate with additional coalition partners to boost stability and help him pursue his party’s policies. Noda, head of the centrist opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, has sought to form an opposition coalition — but so far unsuccessfully.
Ishiba will struggle in the coming months as he must gain consent from the opposition on policies including the budget and other legislation.
He is eyeing a rising smaller, conservative opposition, the Democratic Party for the People, whose seats quadrupled to 28 under its popular leader Yuichiro Tamaki.
A Harvard-educated former Finance Ministry bureaucrat, Tamaki has proposed raising the basic tax-free income allowance and increasing take-home wages, ideas that attracted low-income earners and younger voters in the election. He only wants to cooperate with Ishiba’s party on policy — not as part of a coalition — since he wants to use his leverage to increase his party’s standing ahead of the next election.
Tamaki was recently stung by a magazine article exposing an extramarital affair, which he admitted to on Monday, adding to political uncertainty.
Ishiba’s government is preparing for his trip later this month to ASEAN and Group of 20 summits, as well as a possible meeting with US President-elect Donald Trump on his way home.
Trump to appoint former ICE director Tom Homan as US ‘border czar’
Tom Homan is also a contender for secretary of homeland security
Former ICE chief will be in charge of the deportation of illegal immigrants
Updated 11 November 2024
Reuters
US President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday that Tom Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), will be in charge of the country’s borders in his new administration.
Homan will be “in charge of our nation’s borders (“The Border Czar”), including, but not limited to, the Southern Border, the Northern Border, all Maritime, and Aviation Security,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Homan, who served in Trump administration for a year and a half during his first term, is also a contender for secretary of homeland security.
Trump made cracking down on illegal immigration the central element of his campaign, promising mass deportations. He frequently praised Homan during the campaign, and Homan often hit the trail to rally supporters.
Trump added in his Truth Social post that Homan will be in charge of the deportation of illegal immigrants.
The president-elect is meeting with potential candidates to serve in his administration before his Jan. 20 inauguration as president.
CNN reported on Sunday that Trump had offered Republican Representative Elize Stefanik the job as US ambassador to the United Nations.
Rivals of ousted Bangladesh leader Sheikh Hasina foil her party’s attempt to hold a rally
The rally in Dhaka by Hasina’s party was to commemorate the death of a party activist on Nov. 10, 1987
On Sunday, rival party activists filled up much of the area where the rally was scheduled to take place
Updated 11 November 2024
AP
DHAKA: Rivals of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Sunday thwarted a plan by her Awami League party to hold a rally in Bangladesh’s capital, seen as a potential first effort to make a comeback on the streets since she fled the country in August amid a mass uprising.
The rally in Dhaka by Hasina’s party was to commemorate the death of a party activist on Nov. 10, 1987, which had sparked a mass protest against former military dictator H.M. Ershad. He was eventually ousted from office, ending his nine-year rule in 1990.
The day is commemorated as “democracy day.” In 1991, Bangladesh switched to a parliamentary democracy from a presidential form of government, and since then Hasina and her rival, former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, became the most powerful political figures in the country.
On Sunday, activists of the party headed by Zia, Hasina’s main rival, and also members of the conservative Jamaat-e-Islami party took to the streets of Dhaka, filling up much of the area where the rally was scheduled to take place.
Others, including hundreds of student protesters, also announced that they wouldn’t allow Hasina’s supporters to stand on the streets and hold the rally. The protesters said that they think Hasina’s party was trying to make a comeback by holding a rally on the streets on Sunday. The protesters from the Anti-discrimination Student Movement, a group that led the mass uprising in July-August, aggressively hunted for supporters of Hasina.
Groups of people surrounded the Awami League party’s headquarters near the Noor Hossain Square in Dhaka where Hasina’s supporters were supposed to gather to hold the rally.
Security was tight in the area, but witnesses and local media said that the protesters attacked several supporters of Hasina when they attempted to reach there and chanted slogans in favor of the fallen leader.
The Awami League party said that many of their activists were detained by police as they came under attacks.
Tensions ran high throughout Sunday with the anti-Hasina protesters saying that they wouldn’t allow the party to hold any public rally under any circumstances. The Awami League party questioned the notion, saying it is against the spirit of democracy and the constitutional right to assembly.
The Awami League party posted a number of videos on Facebook on Sunday showing its supporters being manhandled. Its party headquarters had earlier been vandalized following Hasina’s fall on Aug. 5, and on Sunday it was empty and there were signs of destruction. Outside, control was in the hands of Hasina’s opponents.
The political chaos in the South Asian nation went on as Zia’s party was seeking quick reforms and a new election from an interim government headed by Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus. The party believes it will be able to form the new government in the absence of Hasina’s party, while its other allies are also struggling.
As the interim government ends its three months in office, people remain concerned over high commodity prices, law and order, mob justice and the rise of Islamist forces once suppressed by Hasina’s regime. The international community also remains wary about alleged attacks on minority groups, especially Hindus that make up about 8 percent of the country’s 170 million people.
The Yunus-led government said it would seek extradition of Hasina and her close associates as they face charges of crimes against humanity involving deaths of hundreds of protesters during the uprising.
On Sunday, Bangladesh’s Law Adviser Asif Nazrul said the interim government would ask Interpol to issue red notices seeking the arrest and repatriation of fugitives allegedly responsible for the deaths of people during the mass uprising.
“We will … prioritize bringing them back from wherever they are hiding,” he told reporters in Dhaka.
