Violence broke out as Eritreans protested at event held by the country’s embassy in Tel Aviv
A dozen Eritrean asylum seekers have been injured by Israeli police gunfire in Tel Aviv after a demonstration against an Eritrean government event turned violent, police and medical sources said.
Clashes began on Saturday outside a venue in south Tel Aviv that was to host an event organised by the Eritrean embassy in Israel.
Continue reading...Advocates say proposals that cut debt to zero for some borrowers and reduce monthly interest payments are good news
Joe Biden’s new student-loan plan is an important and large step forward on student debt forgiveness in the US even after a previous debt reduction program was controversially struck down by the supreme court, advocates say.
When the justices ruled against Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loans per borrower in June, 40 million debt-burdened Americans were left with questions – especially as monthly payments would resume in October after being paused for over three years because of the Covid pandemic.
Continue reading...Storm hit overnight as business, transport and schools suspended in Hong Kong and Guangdong
Typhoon Saola has made landfall in southern China after nearly 900,000 people were moved to safety and most of Hong Kong and other parts of coastal southern China suspended business, transport and schools.
Guangdong province’s meteorological bureau said the powerful storm churned into an outlying district of the city of Zhuhai, just south of Hong Kong at 3.30am local time. It was forecast to move in a south-westerly direction along the Guangdong coast at a speed of about 10mph (17km/h), gradually weakening before heading out to sea.
Continue reading...Police accused of playing ‘fast and loose’ with New Yorkers’ rights to due process and to freely hold peaceful gatherings
New York City police plan to monitor large gatherings and noise complaints over Labor Day weekend with surveillance drones, officials have announced, prompting outcry from privacy advocates.
Police said Thursday that the remote-controlled aircrafts would be deployed to keep tabs on large gatherings, including private events, as New Yorkers prepared to celebrate the weekend heading into Monday’s holiday.
Continue reading...Nine months after Kenneth Smith’s botched lethal injection, state attorney general has asked for approval to kill him with nitrogen
Kenneth Smith is one of two living Americans who can describe what it is like to survive an execution, having endured an aborted lethal injection last November during which he was subjected to excruciating pain tantamount, his lawyers claim, to torture.
Nine months later Smith has been singled out for another undesirable distinction. If the state of Alabama has its way, he will become the test dummy for an execution method that has never before been used in judicial killings and which veterinarians consider unacceptable as a form of euthanasia for animals – death by nitrogen gas.
Continue reading...Friends and foes of Brazil’s former president believe it is only a matter of time before he is detained
Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, has never shown much sympathy for prisoners.
“Why should we give those dirtbags a good life? … They should just get fucked, full-fucking-stop. That’s what I reckon,” he once ranted.
Continue reading...Russia destroys boat trying to attack Crimea bridge, Moscow claims; US poised to send Kyiv munitions containing depleted uranium, reports say
Continue reading...Dominic Pezzola sentenced to 10 years while Ethan Nordean received an 18-year sentence for roles in 2021 insurrection
Two members of the far-right Proud Boys militia group who took part in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol with the intention of keeping Donald Trump in the White House were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on Friday.
Ethan Nordean, described by prosecutors as a leader of the extremist group, received an 18-year sentence for crimes that included seditious conspiracy, committed when thousands of Trump supporters overran the Capitol building.
Continue reading...Irene Montero calls incident a ‘lower-intensity’ form of sexual violence as push to oust Spanish football chief Rubiales continues
Luis Rubiales’s unsolicited kissing of Jenni Hermoso is just one instance of the abuse suffered by millions of women around the world, Spain’s acting equality minister has said.
Irene Montero described the incident, in which the Spanish football president grabbed the player by the head and planted a kiss on her lips at the Women’s World Cup final medal ceremony, as a “lower-intensity” form of sexual violence that is often invisible and normalised in society.
Continue reading...Mourners gather outside 80 Albert Street amid criticisms of government response and lack of support for victims and families
South African authorities were on Friday still searching for clues behind the cause of the most deadly fire in the country’s history, with at least 74 people confirmed to have died and dozens more being treated in hospital.
About 400 people are thought to have lived in informal settlements in the building at 80 Albert Street in central Johannesburg, which relied on illegal electricity connections for power and had no emergency exits. It is owned by the City of Johannesburg.
Continue reading...Woman accused of contacting beauty blogger on Instagram and offering free salon treatment before killing her with accomplice
A 23-year-old German-Iraqi woman has been indicted for murder after allegedly seeking out a lookalike on Instagram and killing her with an accomplice, in an effort to fake her own death.
The woman, identified as Shahraban Kh-B, was initially thought to have been the murder victim when the blood-soaked body of a young woman was found last August in a parked Mercedes in Ingolstadt, southern Germany.
Continue reading...Canadian advocacy groups alarmed by anti-LGBTQ+ laws in America and say legislation is having an impact across the border
Canadian LGBTQ+ rights and civil liberties organizations are speaking out about the rise in hostile laws and hate crimes in the United States.
The development comes after the Canadian government earlier this week warned LGBTQ+ Canadian citizens about the risks of visiting the US due to a growing wave of anti-LGBTQ+ local laws.
Continue reading...Statement comes amid concern about allegations Saudi forces have killed hundreds of migrants
Germany ended a training programme for Saudi border forces, who have been implicated in the mass killing of migrants at the country’s border with Yemen, after it was alerted to reports of “possible massive human rights violations”, the German interior ministry has said.
In a statement to the Guardian, the ministry said training undertaken by the federal police service for the Saudi border force had been “discontinued after reports of possible massive human rights violations became known and, as a precaution, are no longer included in the current training programme [for Saudi security forces]”.
Continue reading...Salome Zourabichvili’s meetings in Berlin and Brussels violated constitution, party leader says
Georgia’s ruling party is seeking to impeach the president over her visits to the EU, which it said were made against the will of the government, the local news agency Interpress has reported.
Salome Zourabichvili met the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in Berlin on Thursday and the European Council president, Charles Michel, in Brussels on Friday to drum up support for Georgia’s campaign to receive EU candidate status.
Continue reading...Hardline Aipac – condemned for unquestioning support of PM – calls liberal rival J Street ‘grave threat’ to Israel’s security
A public feud has broken out between the US’s leading pro-Israel lobby groups over who represents the true interests of the Jewish state in Washington under the most rightwing government in its history.
The hardline American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) has called its smaller and more liberal rival, J Street, a “grave threat” to Israel’s security and accused it of endorsing the country’s “most virulent critics” in Congress.
Continue reading...After avoiding street protests, former ‘heart of the student movement’ says he is being jailed just for thinking
One of Iran’s most prominent liberal thinkers appears to be days away from being sent back to jail to serve a new six-year sentence, despite the fact he has kept a low profile and not taken part in street demonstrations.
Majid Tavakoli was first arrested in September last year at the outset of nationwide protests following the death of Mahsa Amini in what was seen as a “preventive arrest”. He was among a large group of dissidents swept up in a state dragnet in response to the “women, life, freedom” movement prompted by Amini’s death.
Continue reading...The Nobel Foundation said invitations for the 2023 events were extended to all countries with diplomatic missions in Sweden and Norway
There cannot be “sustainable peace” in Ukraine unless the country regains control of Crimea, Donbas and other territories occupied by Russia, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said at the European House Ambrosetti business forum in Italy on Friday.
Russia has previously said it is open to peace talks with Kyiv but insists on its claim to four Ukrainian provinces it said it annexed last year and fully or partly controls, as well as Crimea that it annexed in 2014 – a condition Kyiv will not accept.
Continue reading...Thaksin, who returned to Thailand last week, ‘accepted his crime and showed remorse’, says royal gazette
King Maha Vajiralongkorn of Thailand has reduced the sentence of Thaksin Shinawatra from eight years down to one, just over a week after the former prime minister returned from more than 15 years in self-imposed exile.
A document published in the royal gazette said the country’s most famous politician had “accepted his crime and showed remorse”, adding the former prime minister was elderly and ill.
Continue reading...Gregor F, 98, who worked as guard at Sachsenhausen between 1943 and 1945, to be tried in juvenile court due to age at time
A former Nazi concentration camp guard has been indicted on charges of acting as an accessory to murder in the latest of a string of eleventh-hour attempts to gain justice for Holocaust victims and survivors.
The 98-year-old, identified as Gregor F, worked as a guard at the Sachsenhausen camp north of Berlin between 1943 and 1945.
Continue reading...At least one man dead after group on holiday in Morocco enter Algerian territory off beach resort of Saïdia
Algerian authorities are believed to have shot dead at least one Moroccan tourist after a group of holidaymakers accidentally strayed into Algerian waters on jetskis, one of the survivors told Moroccan media.
Mohamed Kissi said that the group of friends on jetskis had got lost off the coast and strayed into Algerian waters when his brother, Bilal Kissi, was shot dead; another man, Abdelali Merchouer, was missing, presumed dead. The men were reported to have French-Moroccan dual nationality.
Continue reading...