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After years of delays, former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ties the knot
After almost five years of engagement and a postponement due to the coronavirus pandemic, former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern married longtime partner Clarke Gayford in a private ceremony Saturday.
Details of the event were closely held by the pair, but the ceremony is reported to have been staged at a luxury vineyard in the scenic Hawke's Bay region, 325 kilometers (200 miles) from New Zealand's capital, Wellington.
It is believed only family, close friends and a few of the 43-year-old Ardern's former lawmaker colleagues were invited, including Ardern’s successor and former prime minister Chris Hipkins.
Read: People's rights are threatened everywhere, from wars to silence about abuses, rights group says
Earlier, police met with a small group of protesters who had plastered a wall with dozens of anti-vaccination posters outside the venue. One protester was also seen holding a sign that read, "Lest we forget jab mandates," on the outskirts of the property.
Ardern and Gayford, 47, reportedly began dating in 2014 and were engaged five years later, but due to Ardern's government's COVID-19 restrictions that reduced gatherings to 100 people, the wedding planned for the southern hemisphere summer of 2022 was postponed.
“Such is life,” Ardern said at the time of their decision to call off the wedding. “I am no different to, dare I say, thousands of other New Zealanders.”
Just 37 when she became leader in 2017, Ardern quickly became a global icon of the left. She exemplified a new style of leadership and was praised around the world for her handling of the nation’s worst-ever mass shooting and the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.
In 2018, Ardern became just the second elected world leader to give birth while holding office. Later that year, she brought her infant daughter to the floor of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
New Zealand, under Ardern’s government, had some of the strictest coronavirus mandates in the world, which prompted several rallies during her final year as prime minister. It also led to a level of vitriol from some that hadn’t been experienced by previous New Zealand leaders.
Ardern shocked New Zealanders in January 2023 when she said she was stepping down after five-and-a-half years as prime minister because she no longer had “enough in the tank” to do the job justice in an election year.
Read: Nelson Mandela's support for Palestinians endures with South Africa's genocide case against Israel
Since then, Ardern announced she would temporarily join Harvard University after being appointed to dual fellowships at the Harvard Kennedy School. She has also took an unpaid role combating online extremism.
In June, Ardern received one of New Zealand’s highest honors for her service leading the country through a mass shooting and pandemic. She was made a Dame Grand Companion, meaning people will now call her Dame Jacinda Ardern.
ICJ hearings wrap up with Israel's defence against allegations of genocide
Accused of committing genocide against Palestinians, Israel insisted at the United Nations’ highest court Friday that its war in Gaza was a legitimate defense of its people and said that it was Hamas militants who were guilty of genocide.
Israel described the allegations leveled by South Africa as hypocritical and said that one of the biggest cases ever to come before an international court reflected a world turned upside down. Israeli leaders defend their air and ground offensive in Gaza as a legitimate response to Hamas' Oct. 7 attack, when militants stormed through Israeli communities, killed some 1,200 people and took around 250 hostage.
Israeli legal advisor Tal Becker told a packed auditorium at the ornate Palace of Peace in The Hague that the country is fighting a “war it did not start and did not want.”
“In these circumstances, there can hardly be a charge more false and more malevolent than the allegation against Israel of genocide,” he added, noting that the horrible suffering of civilians in war was not enough to level that charge.
Read: People's rights are threatened everywhere, from wars to silence about abuses, rights group says
South African lawyers asked the court Thursday to order an immediate halt to Israeli military operations in the besieged coastal territory that is home to 2.3 million Palestinians. A decision on that request will probably take weeks, and the full case is likely to last years — and it's unclear if Israel would follow any court orders.
On Friday, Israel focused on the brutality of the Oct. 7 attacks, presenting chilling video and audio to a hushed audience to highlight what happened that day.
“They tortured children in front of parents and parents in front of children, burned people, including infants alive, and systematically raped and mutilated scores of women, men and children,” Becker said.
South Africa’s request for an immediate halt to the Gaza fighting, he said, amounts to an attempt to prevent Israel from defending itself against that assault.
Even when acting in self-defense, countries are required by international law to follow the rules of war, and judges must decide if Israel has. As the two days of hearings ended Friday, ICJ President Joan E. Donoghue said the court would rule on the request for urgent measures “as soon as possible.”
Israel often boycotts international tribunals and U.N. investigations, saying they are unfair and biased. But this time, Israeli leaders took the rare step of sending a high-level legal team — a sign of how seriously they regard the case and likely their fear that any court order to halt operations would be a major blow to the country's international standing.
Read: In Day 2 of hearings, Israel rejects South Africa's allegation of genocide
Still, Becker dismissed the accusations as crude and attention-seeking.
“We live at a time when words are cheap in an age of social media and identity politics. The temptation to reach for the most outrageous term to vilify and demonize has become, for many, irresistible," he said.
He said charges Israel is facing should be leveled at Hamas.
“If there have been acts that may be characterized as genocidal, then they have been perpetrated against Israel," Becker said. Hamas has, he said, a "proudly declared agenda of annihilation, which is not a secret and is not in doubt.”
More than 23,000 people in Gaza have been killed during Israel's military campaign, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. Nearly 85% of Gaza’s people have been driven their homes, a quarter of the enclave's residents face starvation, and much of northern Gaza has been reduced to rubble.
South Africa says this amounts to genocide and is part of decades of Israeli oppression of Palestinians.
“The scale of destruction in Gaza, the targeting of family homes and civilians, the war being a war on children, all make clear that genocidal intent is both understood and has been put into practice. The articulated intent is the destruction of Palestinian life,” said lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, adding that several leading politicians had made dehumanizing comments about people in Gaza.
Malcolm Shaw, an international law expert on Israel's legal team, rejected the accusation of genocidal intent and called the remarks Ngcukaitobi referenced “random quotes not in conformity with government policy."
Another member of the team, Christopher Staker, called South Africa’s request “frankly astonishing.” He said that, if granted, it would mandate “unilateral suspension of military operations by one party to the conflict, only leaving the other party free to continue attacks which it has a stated intention to do.”
Read: Top UN court opens hearings on South Africa's allegation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza
If the court issues an order to halt the fighting and Israel doesn't comply, it could face U.N. sanctions, although those may be blocked by a veto from the United States, Israel's staunch ally. In Washington, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby called the allegations “unfounded.”
The extraordinary case goes to the core of one of the world’s most intractable conflicts — and for the second day protesters rallied outside the court.
Pro-Israeli demonstrators set up a table near the court grounds for a Sabbath meal with empty seats, commemorating the hostages still being held by Hamas. “We want to symbolize the empty chairs, because we are missing them,” said Nathan Bouscher from Center for Information and Documentation on Israel.
Nearby, over 100 pro-Palestinian protesters waved flags and shouted protests.
The case also strikes at the heart of both Israel’s and South Africa's national identities.
Israel was founded as a Jewish state in the wake of the Nazis' slaughter of 6 million Jews during World War II. South Africa’s governing party, meanwhile, has long compared Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank to its own history under the apartheid regime of white minority rule, which restricted most Black people to “homelands.”
The world court, which rules on disputes between nations, has never judged a country to be responsible for genocide. The closest it came was in 2007, when it ruled that Serbia “violated the obligation to prevent genocide" in the July 1995 massacre by Bosnian Serb forces of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica.
In Day 2 of hearings, Israel rejects South Africa's allegation of genocide
As the second day of hearings began Friday at the United Nations' top court, Israel is rejecting allegations levied by South Africa that its campaign against Hamas amounts to genocide against the Palestinian people, saying that, if anything, it is Hamas that is guilty of genocide.
Although the case is likely to take years to resolve, South Africa is asking the International Court of Justice to order an immediate suspension of Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip. It’s unclear if Israel would comply with any court order.
Meanwhile, United States and British militaries launched strikes on sites used by the Iran-backed Houthi rebel group in Yemen in retaliation for their attacks on ships in the Red Sea. The Houthis say their attacks are aimed at stopping Israel’s war on Hamas, but their targets increasingly have little or no connection to Israel and imperil a crucial trade route linking Asia and the Middle East with Europe.
The Oct. 7 Hamas attack from Gaza into southern Israel that triggered the war killed around 1,200 people and saw some 250 others taken hostage by militants. Israel’s air, ground and sea assault in Gaza has killed more than 23,000 people, some 70% of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
People's rights are threatened everywhere, from wars to silence about abuses, rights group says
People’s rights are being suppressed and threatened everywhere in the world, from wars to selective government outrage about some abuses and silence about others because of “political expediency,” a leading human rights group said Thursday.
“We only have to look at the human rights challenges of 2023 to tell us what we need to do differently in 2024,” Human Rights Watch said in its annual global report.
Armed conflicts have mushroomed, leading with the Israel-Hamas war, and the issue is how governments respond to them, Tirana Hassan, the New York-based watchdog's executive director, told a news conference. "It needs to be an end to double standards.”
As an example, she said many governments quickly and justifiably condemned the “unlawful” killings and atrocities by the Palestinian militant Hamas group when it attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing hundreds and taking hostages. After the attacks, Israel “unlawfully blocked” aid to Gaza residents and its ongoing offensive in the territory has killed more than 23,000 people, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, while reducing entire neighborhoods to rubble.
“Yet many of the governments that condemned Hamas’ war crimes have been muted in responding to the war crimes committed by the Israeli government,” Hassan said.
She said such selective outrage sends a dangerous message that some people’s lives matter more than others and shakes the legitimacy of the international rules that protect everyone’s human rights, she said.
Human Rights Watch praised South Africa for seeking a ruling from the International Court of Justice on whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza in a landmark case that began Thursday. Hassan said other countries including the United States should support South Africa’s action “and ensure that Israel complies with the court’s decision.”
The HRW report said tradeoffs on human rights in the name of politics are also clear. It cited the failure of many governments to speak out about the Chinese government’s repression and control over civil society, the internet and media.
“Chinese authorities’ cultural persecution and arbitrary detention of a million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims amount to crimes against humanity,” it said. “Yet many governments, including in predominantly Muslim countries, stay silent.”
The report described the United States and European Union as ignoring their human rights obligations in favor of politically expedient solutions.
“U.S. President Joe Biden has shown little appetite to hold responsible human rights abusers who are key to his domestic agenda or are seen as bulwarks to China,” it said.
“U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia, India, and Egypt violate the rights of their people on a massive scale yet have not had to overcome hurdles to deepen their ties with the U.S.,” the report said. “Vietnam, the Philippines, India, and other nations the U.S. wants as counters to China have been feted at the White House without regard for their human rights abuses at home.”
Also, HRW said the EU circumvents its human rights obligations to asylum seekers and migrants, “especially those from Africa and the Middle East, striking deals with abusive governments like Libya, Turkey and Tunisia to keep migrants outside of the European bloc.”
Several national leaders were named as examples of worrying trends. India's “democracy has slid toward autocracy" under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Tunisia’s President Kais Saied has weakened the judiciary and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has used mass detention as an ostensible solution for fighting crime, the report said.
The group cited as a bright spot for the year the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner alleging war crimes related to the forced transfer of Ukrainian children Russian-occupied areas, and their deportation to Russia.
In Pakistan, authorities last year “used threats, abuse, and detention to coerce Afghans without legal status to return” to Afghanistan, now ruled by the Taliban — forcing even refugees and asylum seekers to go back, the annual report said.
Since the government in Islamabad launched the crackdown, saying it was aimed at foreigners living in Pakistan illegally, nearly half a million Afghans have gone back or been expelled.
Hassan also pointed to the movement toward marriage equality in places like Nepal but especially to the determination of Afghan girls and women who took to the streets to oppose the Taliban bans on work and education and have found alternative ways to learn.
“If the people at the center whose human rights are being abused are still prepared to fight then human rights matter,” she said.
Nelson Mandela's support for Palestinians endures with South Africa's genocide case against Israel
Barely two weeks after he was released from prison in 1990, Nelson Mandela flew to Zambia to meet with African leaders who had supported his fight against South Africa's apartheid system of forced racial segregation.
One figure stood out among the men in dark suits eagerly waiting to greet Mandela on the airport tarmac: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, wearing his black and white checkered keffiyeh headdress, had traveled to see the newly freed Mandela.
He grabbed Mandela in a bear hug and kissed him on each cheek. Mandela smiled broadly. It was confirmation of the solidarity between two men who considered their peoples' struggles for freedom to be the same.
South Africans continue to support the Palestinian cause, and the country has taken the rare step of bringing a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice because of its war in Gaza.
South Africa is not a diplomatic heavyweight and is geographically far from the conflict. But its ruling African National Congress, which Mandela led from an anti-apartheid liberation movement to a political party in government, has retained its strong pro-Palestinian stance even after Mandela died in 2013.
“We have stood with the Palestinians and we will continue to stand with our Palestinian brothers and sisters,” Mandela's grandson, Mandla Mandela, said at a pro-Palestinian rally in Cape Town in October, days after the Hamas attack in southern Israel spurred the war on Gaza. Mandla Mandela, an ANC lawmaker, wore a black and white Palestinian keffiyeh around his neck as he spoke to a large crowd.
Read: Top UN court opens hearings on South Africa's allegation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza
A SHARED STRUGGLENelson Mandela regularly raised the plight of the Palestinians. Three years after apartheid and white minority rule was dismantled in South Africa and Mandela was elected president in historic all-race elections in 1994, he thanked the international community for its help. He added: “But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
Mandela and South African leaders after him compared the restrictions Israel placed on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank with the treatment of Black South Africans during apartheid, framing the two issues as fundamentally about people oppressed in their homeland. Israel provided weapons systems to South Africa’s apartheid government and maintained secret military ties with it up until the mid-1980s, even after publicly denouncing apartheid.
The ANC has consistently criticized Israel as an “apartheid state," even before the current war. International rights groups have also accused Israel of the crime of apartheid against Palestinians and that “resonates strongly with South Africa,” said Thamsanqa Malusi, a South African human rights lawyer.
Malusi said many in the South African government experienced the oppression of apartheid and that could help explain its decision to lodge the case against Israel at the U.N.'s top court.
While Mandela, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning statesman, also reached out to Israel in an attempt to foster a peaceful solution, anti-Israeli rhetoric in South Africa has strengthened over the years, sometimes seeping into everyday life. For example, the ANC's youth wing pressured South African grocery store chains to drop Israeli products and threatened to forcibly shut them down if they didn't.
RESPONSE TO THE WARIsrael's assault on Gaza sparked renewed solidarity with the Palestinian cause in South Africa. Thousands have marched in support of Gaza in Cape Town and Johannesburg, and buildings in the Cape Town neighborhood of Bo Kaap were adorned with pro-Palestine graffiti in the weeks after the war broke out.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa — the current leader of the ANC — has criticized both Israel and Hamas for what he calls atrocities committed by both sides in the conflict. But he also appeared in public wearing a keffiyeh and holding a Palestine flag, even as he offered condolences to Israel over the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, leaving little doubt where South Africa's sympathies lie.
HAMAS CONNECTIONSANC officials, including Mandla Mandela, hosted three Hamas officials in South Africa last month, including the group's top representative in Iran. They attended a ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of Nelson Mandela's death before a statue of the former South African President at the seat of government in a nod to his historic connection with the Palestinian cause.
Read: Nearly 10,000 died from COVID-19 last month, fueled by holiday gatherings and new variant, WHO says
On Wednesday, the eve of the court proceedings, Palestinians in the West Bank city of Ramallah crowded around another statue of Mandela, waving Palestinian and South African flags and holding signs that read: “Thank You South Africa.”
The Hamas visit to South Africa was not welcomed by all, though.
South Africa's main opposition party has said it considers Hamas a terrorist organization, as do the United States and European Union, and support for Palestinians in South Africa has complicated racial connotations. Black and mixed-race South Africans, brutally oppressed under apartheid, have been at the forefront of the support for Palestinians. Support is not as pronounced among South Africa's white minority.
HYPOCRISY?South Africa's ANC-led government says it is taking a morale stance in its genocide case against Israel, first seeking an order for Israel to stop the assaults in Gaza that have killed more than 23,300 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
But the case has given rise to accusations of hypocrisy: The ANC has itself ignored international court orders.
The ANC government refused to arrest then-Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he visited South Africa in 2015 while the subject of a warrant on allegations of genocide by the separate International Criminal Court. South Africa has also retained strong ties with Russia and President Vladimir Putin since the invasion of Ukraine, overlooking an ICC indictment against Putin for alleged war crimes in relation to the abduction of children from Ukraine.
Top UN court opens hearings on South Africa's allegation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza
The United Nations' top court opens hearings Thursday into South Africa's allegation that Israel's war with Hamas amounts to genocide against Palestinians, a claim that Israel strongly denies.
South Africa is initially asking the International Court of Justice to order an immediate suspension of Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip as part of a case that is likely to take years to resolve.
The dispute strikes at the heart of Israel's national identity as a Jewish state created in the aftermath of the Nazi genocide in the Holocaust.
It also involves South Africa's identity: Its governing party, the African National Congress, has long compared Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank to its own history under the apartheid regime of white minority rule, which restricted most Blacks to “homelands” before ending in 1994.
Although it normally considers U.N. and international tribunals unfair and biased, Israel has sent a strong legal team to defend its military operation launched in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.
“I think they have come because they want to be exonerated and think they can successfully resist the accusation of genocide,” said Juliette McIntyre, an expert on international law at the University of South Australia.
In a statement after the case was filed late last year, the Palestinian Authority's foreign ministry urged the court to “immediately take action to protect the Palestinian people and call on Israel, the occupying power, to halt its onslaught against the Palestinian people, in order to ensure an objective legal resolution.”
Two days of preliminary hearings will begin with lawyers for South Africa explaining why the country has accused Israel of “acts and omissions" that are “genocidal in character” in the Gaza war and why it is calling for the court to issue an interim order for an immediate halt to Israel's military actions. A decision will likely take weeks.
Read: Nearly 10,000 died from COVID-19 last month, fueled by holiday gatherings and new variant, WHO says
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 23,200 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. About two-thirds of the dead are women and children, health officials say. The death toll does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
In the Oct. 7 attack, in which Hamas fighters stormed through several communities in Israel and killed some 1,200 people, mainly civilians. They abducted around 250 others, nearly half of whom have been released.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken dismissed the case as “ meritless ” during a visit to Tel Aviv on Tuesday.
“It is particularly galling, given that those who are attacking Israel — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, as well as their supporter Iran — continue to call for the annihilation of Israel and the mass murder of Jews,” he said.
The world court, which rules on disputes between nations, has never judged a country to be responsible for genocide. The closest it came was in 2007 when it ruled that Serbia “violated the obligation to prevent genocide" in the July 1995 massacre by Bosnian Serb forces of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica.
South Africa “will have a hard time getting over the threshold” of proving genocide, McIntyre said.
“It’s not simply a matter of killing enormous numbers of people,” she said in an email to The Associated Press. “There must be an intent to destroy a group of people (classified by race or religion for example) in whole or in part, in a particular place.”
In a detailed, 84-page document launching the case, South Africa argued Israel has demonstrated that intent.
Israel responded by insisting it operates according to international law and focuses its military actions solely against Hamas. It said that the residents of Gaza are not an enemy and that it takes steps to minimize harm to civilians and to allow humanitarian aid to enter the territory.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry statement called South Africa’s case a “despicable and contemptuous exploitation” of the court.
The case revolves around the genocide convention that was drawn up in 1948 in the aftermath of World War II and the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. Both Israel and South Africa are signatories.
Read: US defends its veto of call for Gaza ceasefire while Palestinians and others demand halt to fighting
In its written filing, South Africa says it wants the court “to establish Israel’s responsibility for violations of the Genocide Convention; to hold it fully accountable under international law for those violations" and to "ensure the urgent and fullest possible protection for Palestinians in Gaza who remain at grave and immediate risk of continuing and further acts of genocide.”
A team of lawyers representing South Africa will present three hours of arguments in the court's wood-paneled Great Hall of Justice. Israel's legal team will have three hours Friday morning to answer the allegations.
Among South Africa's delegation will be former British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose leadership of the left-of-center Labour Party was stained by allegations of antisemitism. He is a longtime supporter of the Palestinian cause and a fierce critic of Israel.
Human Rights Watch said the hearings will provide scrutiny of Israel's actions.
“South Africa’s genocide case unlocks a legal process at the world’s highest court to credibly examine Israel’s conduct in Gaza in the hopes of curtailing further suffering,” said Balkees Jarrah, the group's associate international justice director.
The U.N. court, headquartered in the ornate Peace Palace in a leafy suburb of The Hague, deals with disputes between nations. The International Criminal Court, based a few miles (kilometers) away in the same Dutch city, prosecutes individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Israel is back on the International Court of Justice's docket next month, when hearings open into a U.N. request for a non-binding advisory opinion on the legality of Israeli policies in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Nearly 10,000 died from COVID-19 last month, fueled by holiday gatherings and new variant, WHO says
The head of the U.N. health agency said Wednesday holiday gatherings and the spread of the most prominent variant globally led to increased transmission of COVID-19 last month.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said nearly 10,000 deaths were reported in December, while hospital admissions during the month jumped 42% in nearly 50 countries — mostly in Europe and the Americas — that shared such trend information.
"Although 10,000 deaths a month is far less than the peak of the pandemic, this level of preventable deaths is not acceptable," the World Health Organization director-general told reporters from its headquarters in Geneva.
Bangladesh registers 16 more Covid-19 cases in 24hrs
He said it was “certain” that cases were on the rise in other places that haven't been reporting, calling on governments to keep up surveillance and provide continued access to treatments and vaccines.
Tedros said the JN.1 variant was now the most prominent in the world. It is an omicron variant, so current vaccines should still provide some protection.
Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead at WHO for COVID-19, cited an increase in respiratory diseases across the globe due to the coronavirus but also flu, rhinovirus and pneumonia.
“We expect those trends to continue into January through the winter months in the northern hemisphere,” she said, while noting increases in COVID-19 in the southern hemisphere — where it's now summer.
JN.1 Covid: Nat’l advisory committee recommends wearing masks, precautions
While bouts of coughs, sniffling, fever and fatigue in the winter are nothing new, Van Kerkhove said this year in particular, "we are seeing co-circulation of many different types of pathogens.”
WHO officials recommend that people get vaccinated when possible, wear masks, and make sure indoor areas are well ventilated.
“The vaccines may not stop you being infected, but the vaccines are certainly reducing significantly your chance of being hospitalized or dying,” said Dr. Michael Ryan, head of emergencies at WHO.
US defends its veto of call for Gaza ceasefire while Palestinians and others demand halt to fighting
The United States defended its veto of a call for the immediate suspension of hostilities in Gaza at a U.N. meeting Tuesday and again faced demands by the Palestinians and many other countries for a cease-fire now in the Israel-Hamas war – as well as by a group of rabbis in the gallery.
U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood called the Russian-proposed amendment to a Dec. 22 Security Council resolution which it vetoed “disconnected from the situation on the ground.” The council then adopted a watered-down resolution, with the U.S. abstaining, calling for urgent steps to immediately allow expanded humanitarian aid into Gaza, “and to create conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”
An Al Jazeera journalist is the fifth member of his family killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza
Wood called it “striking” that those urging an end to the conflict have made very few demands of Hamas, following its surprise Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel that killed around 1,200 people, “to stop hiding behind civilians, lay down its arms, and surrender.” And he reiterated ongoing U.S. efforts to secure a “pause” in the fighting to get 136 Israeli hostages out of Gaza.
The U.N. General Assembly was meeting because of a resolution it adopted in April 2022 requiring any of the five permanent Security Council members — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France — that vetoes a resolution to explain why to the 193-member world body.
The U.S, only got support Tuesday from Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan who said a cease-fire would be “a victory for Hamas … to continue the reign of terror in Gaza,” which it has ruled since 2007.
He said Israel supports every effort to deliver aid and accused Hamas of looting humanitarian assistance before it reaches the people of Gaza. He also accused the United Nations of becoming “an accomplice to terrorists,” being “obsessed” with Gazans, ignoring Israeli victims and doing nothing to bring the hostages home, and remaining silent on condemning Hamas.
Israel is pulling thousands of troops from Gaza in a possible precursor to a scaled-back offensive
To illustrate the plight of the hostages, Erdan brought a cake with him for Kfir Bibas who will turn one-year-old in the coming days while in captivity. He accused the U.N. of all but forgetting the pain of the innocent baby and asked the General Assembly president to leave the cake – with the name Kfir on it – on the speaker’s podium “as a painful reminder.” But as soon as Erdan finished, a U.N. staff member whisked the cake away.
As a sign of the growing division among Jews over the war, three dozen rabbis from the group Rabbis 4 Ceasefire came to the U.N. as tourists to protest Israel’s offensive in Gaza. The majority of them briefly held signs in the empty Security Council chamber saying “Biden Stop Vetoing Peace,” and a small group called for a ceasefire from the balcony of the General Assembly chamber before being hustled out by U.N. security officers.
Wood, the U.S. envoy, praised U.N. humanitarian efforts, telling the assembly “the United Nations is playing an irreplaceable role in delivering and distributing lifesaving assistance to people in Gaza."
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the U.N. has seen no reports of looting — just videos of some hungry, desperate people trying to take food from trucks — and reiterated that delivering aid to combat zones is very challenging.
The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza has said Israel’s military campaign has killed over 23,000 people, more than two-thirds of them women and children. The count doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants. Last Friday, U.N. humanitarian chief called Gaza “uninhabitable” and said “People are facing the highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded (and) famine is around the corner.”
Riyad Mansour, the U.N. Palestinian ambassador, told the assembly his people are “being slaughtered,” and declared “the horrors need to end and the only way to end them is a ceasefire.”
“The whole world is calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” he said, pointing to the 153 countries that supported a General Assembly resolution urging an end to the fighting along with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, humanitarian organizations, and “moral voices.”
Cuba’s U.N. Ambassador Gerardo Peñalver Portal called it “deplorable” that the Dec. 22 resolution didn’t include a call for an immediate cessation of hostilities, saying a ceasefire is “a priority to halt the genocide against the Palestinian population.”
Iran says at least 95 were killed in blasts at a ceremony honoring slain general
Two bombs exploded and killed at least 95 people at a commemoration for a prominent Iranian general slain by the U.S. in a 2020 drone strike, Iranian officials said, as the Middle East remains on edge over Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for what appeared to be the deadliest militant attack to target Iran since its 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran's leaders vowed to punish those responsible for the blasts, which wounded at least 211 people.
The explosions struck minutes apart on Wednesday, shaking the city of Kerman, about 820 kilometers (510 miles) southeast of the capital, Tehran. The second blast sprayed shrapnel into a screaming crowd fleeing the first explosion.
Blasts kill 103 people at ceremony honouring slain Iranian general Qassim Soleimani
An earlier death toll of 103 was revised lower after officials realized that some names had been repeated on a list of victims, Iran's health minister, Bahram Einollahi, told state TV. Many of the wounded were in critical condition, however, so the death toll could rise.
The gathering marked the fourth anniversary of the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq. The explosions occurred near his grave site as long lines of people gathered for the event.
Iranian state television and officials described the attacks as bombings, without immediately giving clear details of what happened. The attacks came a day after a deputy head of the Palestinian militant group Hamas was killed in a suspected Israeli strike in Beirut.
The first bomb Wednesday was detonated around 3 p.m., and the other went off some 20 minutes later, the Iranian interior minister, Ahmad Vahidi, told state television. He said the second blast killed and wounded the most people.
Images and video shared on social media appeared to correspond with the accounts of officials, who said the first blast happened about 700 meters (765 yards) from Soleimani's grave in the Kerman Martyrs Cemetery near a parking lot. The crowd then rushed west along Shohada Street, where the second blast struck about 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) from the grave.
A delayed second explosion is often used by militants to inflict more casualties by targeting emergency personnel responding to an attack.
Iranian state TV and state-run IRNA news agency quoted emergency officials for the casualty figures. Authorities said Thursday would be a national day of mourning.
Top Hamas official Saleh Arouri, who headed West Bank operations, killed in Beirut blast
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the attackers will face “a harsh response,” though he didn't name any possible suspect. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi added: "Undoubtedly, the perpetrators and leaders of this cowardly act will soon be identified and punished.”
Iran has multiple foes who could be behind the assault, including exile groups, militant organizations and state actors.
While Israel has carried out attacks in Iran over its nuclear program, it has conducted targeted assassinations, not mass casualty bombings. A U.S. State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said American officials had “no reason” to believe Israel was involved in Wednesday's attack in Iran. That was echoed by National Security Council spokesman John Kirby at the White House, who said “our hearts go out to all the innocent victims and their family members.”
Sunni extremist groups including the Islamic State group have conducted large-scale attacks in the past that killed civilians in Shiite-majority Iran, though not in relatively peaceful Kerman.
Iran also has seen mass protests in recent years, including those over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in 2022. The country also has been targeted by exile groups in attacks dating back to the turmoil surrounding its 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iran itself has been arming militant groups over the decades, including Hamas, the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels. As Israel wages its devastating war in Gaza after Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks that killed 1,200 people, both Hezbollah and the Houthis have launched attacks targeting Israel that they say come on behalf of the Palestinians.
Israel is suspected of launching the attack Tuesday that killed a deputy head of Hamas in Beirut, but that attack caused limited casualties in a densely populated neighborhood of the Lebanese capital. Last week, a suspected Israeli strike killed a Revolutionary Guard commander in Syria.
A Houthi spokesman, Mohammed Abdel-Salam, sought to link the bombings to Iran's “support for the resistance forces in Palestine and Lebanon,” though he did not specifically blame anyone for the attack. Some Iranian officials also hinted at Israeli and American involvement without offering evidence, which is common after militant attacks.
In Beirut, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called the people who died in the attacks “martyrs who died on the same road, cause and battle that was led by” Soleimani.
The government of neighboring Iraq expressed condolences to the victims, and the European Union issued a statement offering “its solidarity with the Iranian people.” Even Saudi Arabia, a longtime regional rival which r eached a détente with Iran last year, offered its sympathies.
Soleimani was the architect of Iran’s regional military activities and is hailed as a national icon among supporters of Iran’s theocracy. He also helped secure Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government after the 2011 Arab Spring protests against him turned into a civil, and later a regional, war that still rages today.
Soleimani had been relatively unknown in Iran until the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. His popularity and mystique grew after American officials called for his killing over his help in arming militants with penetrating roadside bombs that killed and maimed U.S. troops.
A decade and a half later, Soleimani had become Iran’s most recognizable battlefield commander. He ignored calls to enter politics but grew as powerful, if not more so, than its civilian leadership.
Ultimately, a drone strike launched by the Trump administration killed the general, part of escalating incidents that followed America’s 2018 unilateral withdrawal from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
Soleimani’s death has drawn large processions in the past. At his funeral in 2020, a stampede broke out in Kerman and at least 56 people were killed and more than 200 were injured as thousands thronged the procession.
Until Wednesday, the deadliest attack to strike Iran since the revolution was the 1981 truck bombing of the Islamic Republican Party’s headquarters in Tehran. That attack killed at least 72 people, including the party’s leader, four government ministers, eight deputy ministers and 23 parliament members.
In 1978 just ahead of the revolution, an intentionally set fire at the Cinema Rex in Abadan killed hundreds of people.
Powerful earthquakes in Japan leave at least 62 dead. Fears grow about saving people still trapped
A series of powerful earthquakes that hit western Japan left at least 62 people dead as rescue workers fought Wednesday to save those feared trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings.
Aftershocks continued to shake Ishikawa prefecture and nearby areas two days after a magnitude 7.6 temblor slammed the area. The first 72 hours are considered crucial to save lives after disasters.
Water, power and cell phone service were still down in some areas. Residents expressed sorrow about their uncertain futures.
Bangladesh to stand steadfast beside Japan in its hour of need
Water, power and cell phone service were still down in some areas. Residents expressed sorrow about their uncertain futures.
"It’s not just that it’s a mess. The wall has collapsed, and you can see through to the next room. I don’t think we can live here anymore,” Miki Kobayashi, an Ishikawa resident, said as she swept around her house.
The house was also damaged in a 2007 quake, she said.
Two of the latest reported deaths came from Suzu, where the death toll grew to 22 people, according to city officials. Twenty-four people died in nearby Wajima city.
Although casualty numbers continued to climb gradually, the prompt public warnings, relayed on broadcasts and phones, and the quick response from the general public and officials appeared to have limited some of the damage.
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"It's not just that it's a mess. The wall has collapsed, and you can see through to the next room. I don't think we can live here anymore," Miki Kobayashi, an Ishikawa resident, said as she swept around her house.
The house was also damaged in a 2007 quake, she said.
Of the deaths, 29 were counted in Wajima city, while 22 people died in Suzu, according to Ishikawa Prefectural authorities. Dozens of people have been seriously injured, including in nearby prefectures.
Although casualty numbers continued to climb gradually, the prompt public warnings, relayed on broadcasts and phones, and the quick response from the general public and officials appeared to have limited some of the damage.
Toshitaka Katada, a University of Tokyo professor specializing in disasters, said people were prepared because the area had been hit by quakes in recent years. They had evacuation plans and emergency supplies in stock.
"There are probably no people on Earth who are as disaster-ready as the Japanese," he told The Associated Press.
Japan is frequently hit by earthquakes because of its location along the "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin.
Katada warned the situation remains precarious and unpredictable. The March 2011 quake and tsunami in northeastern Japan had been preceded by other quakes.
"This is far from over," Katada said.
Predictions by scientists have repeatedly been proven wrong, such as with the 2016 quake in southwestern Kumamoto, an area previously seen as relatively quake-free.
"Having too much confidence in the power of science is very dangerous. We are dealing with nature," Katada said.
Japanese media's aerial footage showed widespread damage in the hardest-hit spots, with landslides burying roads, boats tossed in the waters and a fire that had turned an entire section of Wajima city to ashes.
Powerful earthquakes leave at least 48 dead, destroy buildings along Japan’s western coast
Japan's military has dispatched 1,000 soldiers to the disaster zones to join rescue efforts. It was uncertain how many more victims might still be in the rubble.
Nuclear regulators said several nuclear plants in the region were operating normally. A major quake and tsunami in 2011 caused three reactors to melt and release large amounts of radiation at a nuclear plant in northeastern Japan.
On Monday, the Japan Meteorological Agency issued a major tsunami warning for Ishikawa and lower-level tsunami warnings or advisories for the rest of the western coast of Japan's main island of Honshu, as well as for the northern island of Hokkaido.
The warning was downgraded several hours later, and all tsunami warnings were lifted as of early Tuesday. Waves measuring more than one meter (3 feet) hit some places.
Still, half-sunken ships floated in bays where tsunami waves had rolled in, leaving a muddied coastline.
People who were evacuated from their houses huddled in auditoriums, schools and community centers. Bullet trains in the region were halted, but service was mostly restored. Sections of highways were closed.
Weather forecasters predicted rain, setting off worries about crumbling buildings and infrastructure.
The region includes tourist spots famous for lacquerware and other traditional crafts, along with designated cultural heritage sites.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joined President Joe Biden and other world leaders in expressing support for the Japanese.
"Our hearts go out to our friends in Japan," he said. "We will provide, and have offered, whatever support is requested by our friends in Japan."