Author:

North Korea fires ballistic missiles as Blinken visits Seoul

Launches come days after South Korea and the US wrapped up military drills Pyongyang sees as an invasion rehearsal. North Korea fired short-range ballistic missiles towards its eastern waters as United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken prepared to open a democracy summit in neighbouring South Korea, officials have said. “North Korea fired an unspecified ballistic missile toward the East Sea,” the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Monday, referring to the body of water also known as the Sea of Japan. Japan’s Coast Guard, which confirmed the launches, said the objects appeared to have already fallen. The launches come days after the US and South Korea wrapped up 11 days of so-called Freedom Shield joint military drills. North Korea has long condemned joint US-South Korea military drills, calling them rehearsals for an invasion. Pyongyang earlier this month warned that Seoul and Washington would pay a “dear price” for this year’s Freedom Shield drills, which involved twice as many troops as last year. About 27,000 US soldiers are stationed in South Korea, where the drills took place. South Korea recently wrapped up joint military drills with the United States [Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters] North Korea’s test on Monday was the latest in a series of weapons demonstrations this year, including a missile tipped with a manoeuvrable hypersonic warhead on January 14. Democracy Summit Shortly after the missile launches, Blinken and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol took to the stage at the opening of the Summit for Democracy, which is this year being hosted by South Korea. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned of the risks technology poses to democracy [Evelyn Hockstein/Pool/Reuters] Both Blinken and Yoon spoke about how technology could be used to encourage democracy, but also to undermine it. Blinken’s comments came after the US House of Representatives last week passed a bill that could see the popular social media app TikTok, which is owned by Chinese developer ByteDance, banned. The democracy summit, an initiative of US President Joe Biden, has attracted criticism in past years due to its selective invitation list, with countries including Thailand and Turkey reportedly excluded. Adblock test (Why?)

Uber pays $178m to settle lawsuit with taxi drivers in Australia

Law firm behind class action says outcome among most successful legal actions ever taken against the ride-sharing giant. Uber has agreed to pay $178m to settle a lawsuit with taxi and hire car drivers in Australia who say they lost earnings to the ride-hailing app, a law firm has announced. Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, which filed the class action on behalf of more than 8,000 taxi and hire car owners and drivers in 2019, said the outcome was one of the most successful legal actions ever taken against the ride-sharing giant. “Uber fought tooth and nail at every point along the way, every day, for the five years this has been on foot, trying at every turn to deny our group members any form of remedy or compensation for their losses,” Maurice Blackburn Lawyers Principal Michael Donelly said in a statement on Monday. “But on the courtroom steps and after years of refusing to do the right thing by those we say they harmed, Uber has blinked, and thousands of everyday Australians joined together to stare down a global giant.” “This will be one of the top five class action settlements in Australian legal history – putting beyond any doubt that Uber has been held to account for its actions,” Donelly added. Uber said that it had made “significant” contributions to various state-level taxi compensation schemes since 2018 and that the settlement put “these legacy issues firmly in our past”. “When Uber started more than a decade ago, ridesharing regulations did not exist anywhere in the world, let alone Australia. Today is different, and Uber is now regulated in every state and territory across Australia, and governments recognise us as an important part of the nation’s transport mix,” the company said in a statement. “The rise of ridesharing has grown Australia’s overall point-to-point transport industry, bringing with it greater choice and improved experiences for consumers, as well as new earnings opportunities for hundreds of thousands of Australian workers.” Uber will continue focusing on helping the millions of Australians who use the service to “get from A to B in a safe, affordable and reliable manner”, the company added. Adblock test (Why?)

Electoral Bond Case: SBI should not be selective in disclosing details, says SC

The Supreme Court says in the judgment, it had asked the SBI to disclose all details and that includes the Electoral Bond numbers as well.

Money Laundering Case: SC rejects bail plea of AAP leader Satyendar Jain, asks to surrender

A bench of Justice Bela M Trivedi and Justice Pankaj Mithal dismissed the appeal filed by Jain. The court also rejected the bail plea of the other two co-accused Ankush and Vaibhav Jain.

Rajasthan: Four coaches of Sabarmati-Agra superfast train derail in Ajmer

The incident took place when the train crossed Ajmer station and it was about to reach Madar station.

Lok Sabha Polls 2024: PM Modi to address 2nd public meeting in Karnataka today

This comes two days after his first election meeting in Karnataka was held in Kalaburagi, the home turf of Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge.

Could Haiti be on the brink of collapse?

Gangs control the capital, aid is blocked, and a political transition has stalled. People in Haiti are bracing for more violence, weeks after powerful gangs launched an offensive to topple the government. Food is running out, essential goods are in short supply and nothing is coming in or out of the capital. The United Nations is warning that more than one million people are on the brink of famine. There’s essentially no government in place, and plans to establish a transitional governing council have caused disputes and controversy. So, how can Haiti overcome this crisis? Is foreign involvement helping or is it fuelling instability? Presenter: Hashem Ahelbarra Guests: Jean Eddy Saint Paul – Founding director of the City University of New York’s Haitian Studies Institute and a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College Emmanuela Douyon – Executive director of Haitian think-tank Policite and social justice activist John Packer – Director of Human Rights Research and Education Centre at Ottawa University; has advised the UN in numerous peace processes around the world, including in Haiti Adblock test (Why?)

Over 13,000 children killed in Gaza, others severely malnourished: UNICEF

The UN agency says surviving children do not ‘even have the energy to cry’ as famine looms in the besieged enclave being bombarded for months. Israel has killed more than 13,000 children in Gaza since October 7 while others are suffering from severe malnutrition and do not “even have the energy to cry”, says the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “Thousands more have been injured or we can’t even determine where they are. They may be stuck under rubble … We haven’t seen that rate of death among children in almost any other conflict in the world,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell told the CBS News network on Sunday. “I have been in wards of children who are suffering from severe anaemia malnutrition, the whole ward is absolutely quiet. Because the children, the babies … don’t even have the energy to cry.” Russell said there were “very great bureaucratic challenges” moving trucks into Gaza for aid and assistance as famine stalks more than two million Palestinians since Israel’s “genocidal” war began. Moreover, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), one in three children under the age of two in northern Gaza is now acutely malnourished. The agency also warned that famine is looming in the besieged enclave facing relentless Israeli bombing for more than five months. International criticism has mounted on Israel due to the death toll of the war, the starvation crisis in Gaza, and allegations of blocking aid deliveries into the enclave. On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his threat of a ground assault on Rafah, the town bordering Egypt where more than a million Palestinians have taken refuge. “No amount of international pressure will stop us from realising all the goals of the war: eliminating Hamas, releasing all our hostages and ensuring that Gaza will no longer pose a threat against Israel,” Netanyahu said in a video released by his office. “To do this, we will also operate in Rafah,” he said. Since October 7, Israel’s military campaign has killed at least 31,645 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and displaced nearly two million of its residents. The Israeli operation has also led to accusations of genocide, being probed at the UN’s International Court of Justice. Israel has repeatedly denied the genocide charges and stressed that it is acting in self-defence after the October 7 attack by Hamas that it says killed more than 1,130 people and took more than 200 as captives. Adblock test (Why?)

Putin poised to win Russian presidential election by a landslide

Early results show Putin winning some 87 percent of the vote, the highest-ever result in Russia’s post-Soviet history. President Vladimir Putin is set to win a record post-Soviet landslide victory in Russia’s election, cementing his grip on power, despite a large number of opponents staging a noon protest at polling stations. Shortly after the last polls closed on Sunday, early returns pointed to the conclusion everyone expected: that Putin would extend his nearly quarter-century rule for six more years. According to Russia’s Central Election Commission, he had some 87 percent of the vote with about 60 percent of precincts counted. The result means Putin, 71, will overtake Josef Stalin and become Russia’s longest-serving leader in more than 200 years. Communist candidate Nikolai Kharitonov came second with just under 4 percent, newcomer Vladislav Davankov third and ultra-nationalist Leonid Slutsky fourth, early results suggested. Nationwide turnout was 74.22 percent when polls closed, election officials said, surpassing 2018 levels of 67.5 percent. For Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who first rose to power in 1999, the result is intended to underscore to the West that its leaders will have to reckon with an emboldened Russia, whether in war or in peace, for many more years to come. The United States said the vote was neither free nor fair. “The elections are obviously not free nor fair given how Mr. Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him,” said the White House’s National Security Council spokesperson. In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “this election fraud has no legitimacy and cannot have any”. The election came more than two years after Putin’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II. On Sunday, thousands of Putin’s opponents staged a protest against him, although there was no independent tally of how many of Russia’s 114 million voters took part in the demonstrations. Supporters of Putin’s most prominent opponent, Alexey Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison last month, had called on Russians to come out to a “Noon against Putin” protest. Putin was first nominated as acting president when former Russian President Boris Yeltsin resigned. He then won his first presidential election in March 2000 and a second term in 2004. After two stints as president, Putin switched back to being prime minister in 2008 to circumvent a constitutional ban on holding more than two consecutive terms as head of state. But he returned to the presidency in 2012 and won a fourth term in 2018. Adblock test (Why?)

Schrödinger’s genocide

Bosnians have experience with genocide. Not just the signs of it coming. Not just the fact of it happening. But also this strange phenomenon we call “Schrödinger’s genocide”: the simultaneous glorification and denial of genocide. There is a cruel dance between the systematic relativisation of the legal qualification of genocide and the continuous pursuit of genocidal politics and its results. Despite the verdicts issued by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), we have not healed. The ethnically cleansed Republika Srpska still stands as the triumph of the Serb genocidal project. Bosnian history has demonstrated the futility of the “never again” mantra and Gaza is now confirming it. The genocide of my people was accompanied by the same rhetoric that Israeli officials now espouse: a genocidal army is the only thing standing between Europe and “Muslim barbarians”, they claim. I have often lamented how the Jews, who struggled for years after World War II to globalise the knowledge about the Holocaust, started facing serious Holocaust denial as the number of living survivors started to dwindle. Swedish survivors Hédi Fried (98) and Emerich Roth (97) died recently – a major loss for the Jewish community and those working to uphold the “never again” vow. By contrast, Bosnians are experiencing genocide denial while most of us, survivors, are still alive. Genocide scholar Gregory Stanton argued there are 10 stages of genocide, the last one being denial, but we are effectively experiencing the 11th phase: glorification and triumphalism. There are people who not only invest resources into historical revisionism of the genocide they committed in the 1990s, but are de facto threatening to repeat it. The Bosnian “final solution” was not properly finalised, they often say. In my home city, Banja Luka, the administrative capital of Republika Srpska, you can buy T-shirts with the faces of war criminals Radovan Karadžić, Ratko Mladić, Biljana Plavšić, and Slobodan Milošević. And Russian President Vladimir Putin, too. In the case of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, which the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has already characterised as a plausible genocide, we see denial among Israeli politicians and propagandists while it is still going on. There is even more denial in Western countries with histories of horrific genocides, especially Germany. Western governments and media are engaged in a systematic cover-up of Israeli war crimes and bullying of those who try to expose them. Laws are proposed on short notice that aim to criminalise free speech and criticism of Israel. At the same time, the glorification of this genocide is broadcast in real time on social media. Accounts with thousands of followers post footage of Israeli soldiers committing war crimes. People want credit even for discrediting content. The Palestinians have been dehumanised to such an extent that their executioners are deeply convinced that their violent acts are not just morally justified but also noble, and they must take pride in their “good work”. The Serb authorities did much to hide the concentration camps from foreign journalists. They tried to cover up massacres, moving mass graves multiple times. By contrast, the hubris of Israeli soldiers drives them to produce countless images and videos of their work: endearing messages to loved ones from sites of destruction, the mocking of everything Palestinian, proud repetitions of the genocidal discourse. French philosopher Jean Baudrillard was right: We postmodern humans want to broadcast ourselves to the world whatever we do. I am not surprised that the Israeli army is broadcasting its war crimes as I was not surprised that Hamas had cameras on on October 7. We have seen attempts to whitewash Hamas’s crimes, but we have also seen propaganda campaigns aimed at making them look even more horrible as a way of justifying the crimes of the Israeli army. Meanwhile, Palestinians have felt compelled to report in detail the atrocities they face. It is perverse that people suffering so much are forced to record and broadcast unimaginable slaughter to be believed, to be humanised, to be pitied enough so their cry for help is heard. We think we live in a different time, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has shown the world that the old rules still apply. Though Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari is correct that since World War II fewer people have died in wars, Israel keeps confirming the fact that nations are built through violence. In Gaza, the old world order came back with a vengeance. Western powers are doing the exact opposite of acting in the spirit of the civilisation they have bragged about building. They have armed the aggressor and aided his indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, their starvation, and culturicide. They encouraged the media to dehumanise the victims and cover up the crimes. And finally, despite the explicit ruling by the ICJ, they cut aid. Let us note here that even the Israeli judge in the ICJ hearing on Gaza voted in favour of the provision of humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians. As a Holocaust survivor, of course, he did at least that. Despite the staggering effort by Western media to suppress information, there has been a significant shift in public opinion in the West. This means that the timing is bad for Israel. Netanyahu and his predecessors should have finished their genocidal project decades ago. Back then, there were fewer avenues for the truth to surface. Places were ethnically cleansed and mass graves were buried under parking lots. As the Israeli interviewees in a 2022 documentary about a massacre in the Palestinian village of Tantura made clear, they got away with it because no one was watching. But people across the whole world are watching now and there is no excuse not to act to stop it. Once a genocide happens, history shows, there is no going back. Six million Jews and millions of their unborn descendants are missing in Germany and other nations. Many are missing from countries across Asia and Africa. They will never return. Germans may have apologised, built memorial