Two IndiGo planes come dangerously close over Delhi airport after plane’s wrong turn; Here’s what happened next
The first plane was operating a Delhi-Hyderabad flight, while the second was on its way to Raipur from Delhi. An investigation is being done by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) which called it a “serious incident”.
What’s fuelling the deadly cholera outbreak in Southern Africa?
A severe cholera outbreak is currently ravaging communities in Southern Africa, spreading across borders in what experts say is the worst such crisis involving the illness that the region has seen in a decade. Thousands of people have died, and thousands of others have been infected with the acute diarrheal disease in at least seven countries. In some of the hardest-hit countries, the outbreak forced millions of students to stay back home in January. Across the region, emergency response centres have sprung up in school fields and stadiums, and are teeming with groaning patients in pain. Fears are mounting that if the outbreak is not tackled soon, healthcare staff could be overwhelmed. In an emergency summoning to address the outbreak earlier this month, leaders of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) said they were working to stop the spread, but a lack of clean water, weak cross-border checks, and a global shortage of vaccines could test that resolve. Here’s a breakdown of what’s causing the spread and how many people have been affected: How widespread is the outbreak? Caused by the vibrio cholerae bacteria, cholera infects the small intestine, producing toxins that the body works hard to expel by secreting large amounts of vomit or watery diarrhoea, leading to rapid dehydration. Mild cases can disappear after a few days of oral rehydration treatment, but in severe cases – approximately one in 10 – it could lead to death within a day if left untreated. Since January 2022, at least 188,000 people have been infected with cholera across seven countries in Southern Africa: Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo. More than 4,100 people have died, according to the UN humanitarian agency, OCHA. The disease has been spreading since 2022. Although badly hit Zambia only reported its first case in October 2023, more than 18,804 people were infected by Thursday, in what authorities say is the country’s worst outbreak ever. At least 658 people have died since October. Malawi, with at least 59,000 cases since early 2022, is also reporting its largest cholera outbreak ever. In Zimbabwe, 21,000 cases since February 2023 make this epidemic the second-worst on record. DRC, which is also a member of the SADC, has the highest number of infections at 71,000, while South Africa has recorded the lowest number of cases, at 1,076 people. Monthly cases across the affected countries hovered around 2,000 infections since January 2023, but then peaked in January 2024 at 3,400 cases, suggesting higher transmission levels going into February. What’s fuelling this outbreak? Cholera typically spreads when people ingest water or food that’s contaminated. The disease is common in areas with poor sanitation, or in conflict zones where drinking water sources might be contaminated with faecal matter or wastewater from sewers. Although endemic to Africa and parts of Asia, experts say it’s rare for several countries to experience outbreaks simultaneously, as is the case in southern Africa. The outbreak was likely triggered by a cocktail of issues, rather than a single event. Regular, unchecked cross-border movement, for example, means infections can be transported: One 2023 study found that two sisters who had travelled from South Africa to a cholera hot spot in Malawi infected a third person on their return and that the strain that is currently spreading is originally from South Asia. While it’s rare for people to transfer the infection through casual contact, poor hygiene can lead to faecal matter from an infected person contaminating food meant for others. Poor sewage systems, alongside inadequate clean water sources for drinking, cooking and hygiene are also a persistent problem in the region. More than half of the population in rural communities in Southern African countries — except for South Africa and Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland — have no access to sanitation facilities like toilets (PDF). In South Africa, researchers say 80 percent of wastewater systems need upgrading. Increasingly frequent and more severe flooding linked to climate change has an impact too, experts have said. Anja du Plessis of the University of South Africa (UNISA) told Al Jazeera that cholera occurs more in the rainy season, which the region is currently experiencing. Flooding “results in more run-off containing more pathogens, increasing the risk of contamination,” she said. Cyclone Kenneth tore through Madagascar, Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, in March 2023, and likely worsened cholera transmission. At the moment, cholera vaccines used both preventively and reactively are scarce, forcing the World Health Organization (WHO) to abandon the usual two-dose oral application for a single dose. Some 29 countries reported cholera outbreaks in 2022, an increase from the average of 20 reporting countries annually. That uptick has stretched the estimated 36 million doses available yearly. There’s only one available manufacturer of the dose at the moment – South Korean firm EuBiologics — and it’s already producing at maximum capacity, according to WHO. While two doses of the vaccine can stop cholera for about three years, one dose reduces the immunity period to between six months and two years. How are SADC countries responding? At an emergency summit on February 2, SADC leaders promised to increase funding for water systems and to work on a cross-country response plan to monitor cholera spread, especially after climate change-linked natural disasters. The leaders also aim to start manufacturing cholera vaccines regionally, although they acknowledged they don’t have enough resources to buy medical supplies like test kits. But some are sceptical and say community-based campaigns in the short term might be more effective than SADC’s plans. “The response so far has been poor [and] we will have to see if their words are transformed into action,” du Plessis of UNISA said. “We can however not depend and wait on the governments to take action. Communities should be properly informed on WASH [water and sanitation hygiene] facilities and practices so that the rate of the outbreak can be curbed.” In Zambia, authorities delayed January school resumption for four million students by about a month
Dwarka Expressway’s 19-km stretch in Gurugram likely to open soon; check details
Dwarka Expressway starts from Shiv Murti on Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway and will connect Dwarka in Delhi to Gurugram in Haryana.
Trump holds large lead over Haley 4 days from South Carolina GOP presidential primary
GREENVILLE, S.C. – With the clock ticking toward Saturday’s Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, a new poll indicates that former President Trump maintains a large double-digit lead over Nikki Haley, his last remaining major rival in the race for the GOP nomination. Trump, the commanding frontrunner for the Republican nomination as he makes his third straight bid for the White House, stands at 63% support among those likely to vote in Saturday’s Republican presidential primary, according to a Suffolk University/USA Today survey released on Tuesday. Haley, a former two-term Palmetto State governor who later served as ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration, stands at 35% in the poll, which was conducted Feb. 15-18. The survey is the latest this month to suggest Haley faces a steep uphill climb in her home state. Getting past the top lines, the poll also indicates Trump with a massive 72% to 25% lead among Republicans questioned, with Haley holding a narrow 53%-46% advantage among independents. LAST RIVAL STANDING: HALEY FACES BIG CHALLENGE IN HER HOME STATE AGAINST TRUMP While South Carolina’s GOP primary is open to all voters as long as they have not already cast a ballot in the Feb. 3 Democratic presidential primary, nearly two-thirds of those sampled by the poll indicated they were Republicans, with only 28% identifying as independents. Independents helped fuel Haley’s 43% finish in last month’s New Hampshire GOP presidential primary, 11 points behind Trump. HALEY SPOTLIGHTS TRUMP CHAOS’ AS JUDGE SETS FORMER PRESIDENT’S HUSH MONEY TRIAL DATE Haley started turning up the volume on Trump last month, when she became the final rival standing against the former president in the GOP nomination race. Additionally, Haley has been sharpening those attacks in recent days. Pointing to Trump’s controversial comments a week ago that he would not stand in the way of Moscow if Russian leader Vladimir Putin attacked a NATO member country that failed to pay its full share of dues, Haley at rallies Monday in Greenville and Camden once again charged that her rival “gets unhinged when he goes off the teleprompter.” Haley also savaged Trump over the death of high-profile Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, which much of the world assumes was ordered by Putin. “I don’t know why he keeps getting weak in the knees when it comes to Russia. But l tell you what, Russia’s not getting weak in the knees,” Haley argued. A day earlier, during a Fox News town hall in South Carolina hosted by John Roberts, Haley spotlighted the former president’s silence on Navalny’s death, saying “Donald Trump needs to answer whether he thinks Putin is responsible for Navalny.” HALEY SPOTLIGHTS TRUMP CHAOS’ AS JUDGE SETS FORMER PRESIDENT’S HUSH MONEY TRIAL DATE On “Fox and Friends” on Monday morning, Haley argued that Trump was too distracted by his legal difficulties and multiple trials and cases, saying “Trump’s doing late-night rants about his court cases. He’s going to be in court for the rest of the year. We can’t be distracted.” Haley also continues to hammer Trump over his recent comments mocking the absence on the campaign trail of her husband Michael – who is on a military deployment overseas. She is using those remarks by the former president to highlight what she argues is his long history of disparaging military members. However, Suffolk University political research director David Paleologos spotlighted that the new poll indicated “Trump was winning by a wider margin among South Carolina military households than among non-military households, despite his questioning of the presence of Haley’s husband.” “Within the subset of the Republican Primary electorate, nothing sticks to Trump,” Paleologos said. Trump grabbed a majority of the votes last month in Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary victories, and won by a landslide two weeks ago in the Nevada and U.S. Virgin Island caucuses, as he moved toward locking up the nomination. While South Carolina is home for Haley, the former president enjoys the backing of the state’s governor, nearly the entire congressional delegation and scores of state lawmakers and local officials. “She’s getting clobbered,” Trump emphasized last week at a rally in North Charleston, South Carolina, as he touted his formidable lead over Haley. “She’s finished.” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told Fox News “Nikki Haley can’t name a single state she can win, and she is five days away from getting crushed in her own backyard, so it’s no surprise that her embarrassing daily temper tantrums over President Trump are getting more and more desperate.” Trump returns to South Carolina on Tuesday to headline a Fox News town hall in Greenville hosted by Laura Ingraham. The pre-taped one-hour event, which will focus on both domestic issues and overseas conflicts, will air at 7 p.m. ET. Hours earlier in Greenville, Haley will deliver what her campaign describes as a “state of the race” speech. While Trump is dominating the Republican nomination race, Haley repeatedly points to general election polls that suggest she would be the stronger GOP standard-bearer to face off in November against President Biden. She reiterated that argument on the campaign trail Monday. “Donald Trump can’t win and we have to win. That’s the biggest thing. He lost it for us in 2018. He lost it for us in 2020. He lost it for us in 2022. Look at last week. He lost another court case on immunity. Now he’s going to be named citizen Trump,” she emphasized. Haley argued that “everything he touches, we lose. How many more times do we have to lose before we say maybe he’s the problem.” Haley has enjoyed strong fundraising so far this year, and she is telling supporters that “I’m in this for the long haul.” She reiterated to Fox News Digital in a recent interview that “our focus is on South Carolina, Michigan, Super Tuesday.” Michigan holds its primary on Tuesday, Feb. 27, three days after South Carolina, and 15 states hold contests on Super Tuesday on March 5. Pointing to
AOC joins critics of NYPD dance team, but for a very different reason
The progressive Squad’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., joined critics of the New York City Police Department’s dance team – but not over concerns about crime. “How many school music programs got defunded for this,” AOC, who notoriously has supported the defund the police movement, wrote on X. The NYPD’s dance team recently performed live for the local PIX 11 news station, sparking swift condemnation online that the department is not focusing on combating crime or enforcing the law. Other critics who spoke to Fox News Digital said they found the video offensive not only to taxpayers, but also to women who work in law enforcement. “If that’s what you need to do, do that on your own time. At a time when violent crime is off the roof in New York City, this is not appropriate,” Nicole Parker, a former FBI agent and Fox News Contributor, told Fox News Digital. “This is not keeping the community safe and is very concerning.” NYPD DANCE TEAM UNDER FIRE AMID CRIME CONCERNS Replying to Ocasio-Cortez’s reaction, some X users – while still condemning the seven-member police dance team’s performance – said the congresswoman missed the mark. “How many people in your district are getting screwed over by the migrant invasion?” one user said. “How many school music programs could we fund if we got rid of useless, harmful politicians like you?” another asked. “Isn’t this the type of police that you like, the ones who don’t actually enforce laws,” a third person wrote. NYPD MIGRANT ATTACK: ALVIN BRAGG FOLDS ON CATCH-AND-RELEASE, BUT JUDGE GIVES $1 BAIL TO SUSPECTED GANG MEMBER Last April, Ocasio-Cortez notably criticized New York City Mayor Eric Adams for increasing police salaries – a move that came following years of law enforcement recruitment and retention woes in the wake of 2020 racial justice protests and riots, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent vaccine mandates. AOC took issue with how most officers “are paid more than a teacher with a master’s degree serving the same kids involved in the same incidents.” “We are defunding safety, defunding our public schools, defunding our public pools, defunding our parks, defunding our libraries, when we are taking all of those resources, and demanding that every single department, except the militarized one, be cut,” she said at the time. The viral police dance crew video comes at a time when New York City is strapped for resources in managing the influx of more than 170,000 migrants. On Jan. 27, a gang of migrants was accused of attacking two NYPD officers in Times Square. A week and a half later, on Feb. 8, a teenage migrant allegedly shot a woman at a Times Square clothing store before opening fire on NYPD officers. The NYPD released the citywide January crime statistics showing that robbery increased by nearly 6% as well as a small increase in grand larceny. Authorities added that crimes in the subway and transit systems, which accounts for just 2% of all major crime committed in New York City, saw an increase of 70 index crimes (222 vs. 152) in January. CLICK TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Authorities claim that there are continued declines across most major crime categories, compared to the first month of last year, which included substantial drops in murder, rape, burglary, and felony assault – despite the most recent rise in violent crimes over the last month. Fox News’ Stepheny Price contributed to this report.
Who is Julian Assange? Will the WikiLeaks founder be extradited to the US?
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is making a last-ditch attempt to prevent his extradition to the United States to face criminal charges over espionage and the publication of classified information. WikiLeaks caused a diplomatic storm after it published a huge cache of secret military files in 2010 and 2011. Washington wants to try him for the leaks that it says damaged its national security. Here is what we know about Assange and his legal battle: What is the trial about? Two senior judges will hear arguments from Assange’s legal team over two days starting on Tuesday. A UK High Court in 2021 ordered Assange’s extradition, which was upheld by the Supreme Court a year later. Former home secretary Priti Patel cleared Assange’s extradition order in April 2022. The Australian-born Assange, who has been in prison since 2019, wants a review of former home secretary’s extradition order and to challenge the 2021 court order in the two-day hearing. What is WikiLeaks? In 2006, Assange launched WikiLeaks, an online platform where people can anonymously submit classified leaks such as documents and videos. In April 2010, WikiLeaks released footage showing a US Apache helicopter attack which killed a dozen people, including two Reuters journalists, in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. This caused the platform to gain prominence. Also in 2010, it released more than 90,000 classified US military documents on the Afghanistan war, and almost 400,000 secret US files on the Iraq war. The leaks represented the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history. WikiLeaks also released 250,000 secret diplomatic cables from US embassies around the world, with some of the information published by newspapers such as The New York Times and Britain’s The Guardian. US politicians and military officials, angered by the leaks, argued the unauthorised publication of information put lives at risk. In 2013, Chelsea Manning, a former army intelligence analyst, was sentenced for leaking thousands of secret messages to WikiLeaks. She served seven years in a military prison before being released on an order of President Barack Obama. What is Assange charged with? Assange has been indicted in the US on 18 charges over the publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2010 by WikiLeaks. Seventeen of these counts are for espionage while one is for computer misuse. US lawyers say Assange is guilty of conspiring with Manning and attempting to hack into a Pentagon computer. The prosecution against Assange is made under the 1917 Espionage Act, which has never before been used for publishing classified information. Supporters of Assange argue he should be protected under the press freedoms granted by the First Amendment to the US Constitution and he had acted as a journalist to expose US military wrongdoing. Amnesty has released a statement appealing to the US authorities to drop the charges, deeming the government’s pursuit of Assange a “full-scale assault on the right to freedom of expression”. “Julian has been indicted for receiving, possessing and communicating information to the public of evidence of war crimes committed by the US government,” Assange’s wife Stella said. “Reporting a crime is never a crime.” Who is Julian Assange? Assange, now 52, was born Townsville, Australia, in July 1971. Assange is married to Stella Assange, a lawyer who met him in 2011 when she was hired as part of his legal team. Stella, originally called Sara Gonzalez Devant, changed her name to Stella Moris in 2012 to protect herself and her family while working with Assange. “His life is at risk every single day he stays in prison, and if he’s extradited, he will die,” Stella has said. Assange’s wife has been very vocal in defence of her husband. The couple has two children and married in March 2022. Arrest and Assange’s legal battle While the US only officially unsealed criminal charges against Assange in 2019, his legal battle spans 13 years. On November 18, 2010, a Swedish court ordered Assange’s arrest over rape allegations made by two female Swedish WikiLeaks volunteers. Assange denied the allegations and claimed the Swedish case was a pretext to extradite him, or hand him over, to the US to face charges over the WikiLeaks releases. In December 2010, Assange was arrested in the UK on a European Arrest Warrant but was released on bail. London’s Westminster Magistrates Court in 2011 ordered Assange to be extradited to Sweden, a decision he appealed. In 2012, his final appeal was rejected by the UK Supreme Court, after which he sought asylum in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. The asylum was granted, but revoked in April 2019, after which a screaming Assange was carried out of the embassy. Throughout his asylum, UK police patrolled the embassy, saying Assange would be arrested if he left the building over his failure to surrender to bail earlier. His two children were born while he was holed up inside the embassy. In June 2019, the US Department of Justice formally asked UK authorities to hand Assange over to the US, where he would face charges. Swedish authorities dropped the rape investigation against Assange in 2019, saying the evidence was not strong enough to bring charges, partly due to the passage of time. The extradition hearings began in February 2020, but were adjourned after a week. In January 2021, in London, Judge Vanessa Baraitser concluded that Assange should not be sent to the US due to his frail mental health, adding there was a risk he would attempt suicide. Besides his mental health, Assange’s physical health has also declined in prison. In October 2021, he experienced a mini-stroke. He also broke a rib coughing. His wife has said he has aged prematurely. However, the US authorities won an appeal in December 2021 at London’s High Court against this decision, after giving a package of assurances about the conditions of Assange’s detention if convicted, including a pledge he could be transferred to Australia to serve any sentence. What are the possible outcomes of the hearing? If Assange and his legal team
Ten years ago Russia annexed Crimea, paving the way for war in Ukraine
On March 7, 2014, a husky man in his late 30s with closely cropped hair addressed an uneven line of four dozen “volunteers”. Next to him were three men in body armour and green uniforms, with no insignia. The crowd of men, aged 20 to 50, were gathered outside a white Stalinist-era government building in Sevastopol, a port in Ukraine’s Crimea. They were uphill from the seashore, next to huge sequoias, blossoming cherry trees and elderly ladies holding hand-written posters that read, “In Russia through a referendum” and “I want to go home to Russia.” Eight days later, Moscow would hold a “referendum” on the Black Sea peninsula’s “return” to Russia, and the men were a nascent “self-defence unit” that would “prevent provocations,” the man said. I approached them with a notebook and a dictaphone – and was immediately seized by two “volunteers”. “Got a spy here!” they yelled, twisting my arms and ready to beat me to a pulp. But the instructor told them and me to wait. He kept on talking for half an hour, telling the crowd that they would train at a military base outside Sevastopol and should arrive in “comfy clothes” and sneakers. One of the volunteers asked him whether they should bring firearms. Many others nodded approvingly. (Al Jazeera) “When you take up arms, we become an armed criminal group. But if something happens, each unit will be backed by fire,” the instructor said. After the meeting, he checked my press ID and told me he was a retired intelligence officer who had served in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus region and arrived in Crimea as a “volunteer”. “Our groups will have to respond to challenges, provocations because there is a shortage of policemen in town,” he told me. “There’s NATO propaganda at work. “Our aim is to prevent the first shot. If the first shot happens, you won’t stop the mess,” he said. He politely declined to say what his name was. ‘Little green men’ The first shot didn’t happen, but what took place in Crimea 10 years ago paved the way for today’s war between Ukraine and Russia. On February 20, 2014, Vladimir Konstantinov, speaker of Crimea’s regional parliament and a Russian politician, said he “didn’t rule out” the peninsula’s “return” to Russia. On the same day, thousands of gun-toting men in unmarked uniforms appeared throughout Ukraine’s Crimea. They responded to the victory of pro-Western protests in Kyiv that would within days remove pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Dubbed “little green men” or “polite people,” the servicemen didn’t interact with locals or reporters, while Russian President Vladimir Putin said in Moscow that “they are not there”. They appeared next to Ukrainian military, naval and air bases, and the interim government in Kyiv ordered Ukrainian servicemen in Crimea to leave without firing a single shot. Many servicemen – along with thousands of police officers and government officials – joined the pro-Russian “government” formed by Sergey Aksyonov, a minor political figure and former mafia boss nicknamed “Goblin.” Some servicemen were detained, including Ihor Voronchenko, deputy head of Crimea’s coastal defence at the time. “There was a solitary cell, without a window, when you lose the sense of time, space. It affects one psychologically,” Voronchenko told me in 2018 when he was head of Ukraine’s navy. No shots were fired, but blood was spilled. On March 4, a “self-defence” unit abducted a Crimean Tatar protester, Reshat Ametov. He was held with other hostages in Simferopol, Crimea’s administrative capital, and tortured for a week. His naked, bruised body was found on March 15, head wrapped in plastic, eyes poked out. A day later, the “referendum” took place. Only a handful of schools and government buildings were used as “polling stations” so that the jubilant pro-Russian “voters,” mostly the elderly nostalgic about their Soviet youth, would throng and fill them, creating an illusion of mass vote. Moscow said 90 percent of Crimeans voted to join Russia, but the “referendum” was not recognised by Ukraine or any other nation. On March 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin made Crimea part of Russia. The annexation propelled his sagging approval ratings to an atmospheric 88 percent, and some Russians saw it as a first step to restoring the USSR. In response to the Arab Spring, a series of mass protests in the Middle East, the Kremlin came up with the idea of a “Russian Spring,” stoking protests in Russian-speaking Ukrainian regions in the east and south. Why Crimea? Ancient Greeks, Romans, Mongols and Turks contested Crimea, the westernmost end of the Great Silk Road. It became a jewel in the crown of Russian czars, who annexed it in 1783 from the Crimean Tatars, whose Muslim state was ruled by the descendants of Genghis Khan and allied with Ottoman Turkey. The czars and communists understood Crimea’s utmost strategic importance in controlling the Black Sea, and Nazi Germany occupied it during World War II. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin accused Tatars of “collaborating” with the Nazis and ordered their entire community of 200,000 deported to Central Asia. “Early in the morning, there was a loud bang on the door. I yelled, ‘Mum, Dad is back from the war! But there were two soldiers who told us to start packing,’” historian Nuri Emirvaliyev, who was 10 at the time, told me about the May 18, 1944 deportation. More than half of them died en route, including his younger sister. “During stops, soldiers yelled, ‘Got any dead? Bring them out!’” Emirvaliyev recalled. The rare survivors and their descendants were allowed to return to Crimea in the late 1980s only to see their homes occupied by ethnic Russians and Ukrainians and become a distrusted and vilified minority. Crimea was made part of Soviet Ukraine in 1954 during the construction of the North Crimean Canal which made agriculture in arid interior areas possible and triggered the growth of urban centres. Moscow turned Crimea into a Soviet Riviera, and millions of former Soviet citizens still reminisce about their holidays
The Day Before October 7
For decades, Gaza has been gripped by a chokehold. Life in the enclave has often been described as an open air prison. No one leaves without the express permission of its neighbour. This is nothing new. But in the weeks and days leading up to October 7, the feeling on the ground was changing. Dareen Abughaida presents this new digital series.Pinch Point, where geography and politics collide. Adblock test (Why?)
Israeli police push back protesters demanding deal on Gaza captives
NewsFeed Israeli police grappled with protesters marching to the house of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to demand a deal to free 134 captives held in Gaza. Published On 20 Feb 202420 Feb 2024 Adblock test (Why?)
Haiti President Moise’s widow, ex-PM among 50 charged in his assassination
Leaked document claims first lady allegedly conspired with former PM to kill the president and replace him herself. A Haitian judge investigating the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise has charged his widow, the former prime minister and an ex-chief of police with complicity in the killing. The 122-page leaked document, published by local media outlet AyiboPost on Monday, detailed how the president’s widow, Martine Moise, allegedly conspired with former Prime Minister Claude Joseph to kill the president, intending to replace him herself. In the document, Judge Walther Wesser Voltaire ordered the arrest and trial of some 50 people involved in the gunning down of Moise at his private residence in July 2021. A group of about 20 assailants, most of them Colombian mercenaries, were on the scene. All the accused were referred to the criminal court “to be judged on the facts of criminal conspiracy, armed robbery, terrorism, assassination and complicity in assassination”. Justifying the indictment of the former first lady, who was wounded during the attack, the document described her statements as “so tainted by contradictions that they leave something to be desired and discredit her”. Joseph and the former director-general of the national police, Leon Charles, were also found to have “sufficient indications” of involvement in the killing. AyiboPost specified that the document did not clearly identify the masterminds of the assassination, nor their financiers. Moise has criticised what she calls unjust arrests on social media. Joseph previously told the Miami Herald newspaper that the president’s de facto successor, Prime Minister Ariel Henry, was “weaponizing the Haitian justice system” to persecute opponents in “a classic coup d’etat”. Martine Moise grieves during the funeral for her husband, slain Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, on July 23, 2021, in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, the main city in his native northern region [Valerie Baeriswyl/AFP] A spokesperson for Henry’s office said the judge was independent and “free to issue his order in accordance with the law and his conscience”. Miami trial A separate case on Moise’s killing is being tried in Miami. The United States found the case fell within its jurisdiction because part of the assassination plot was hatched in South Florida. Prosecutions were launched against 11 people over their alleged involvement in the murder. Six of 11 defendants have pleaded guilty to a plot to send Colombian mercenaries to kidnap Moise, a plan which was at the eleventh hour changed to a plot to murder him. The conspirators had, according to US charges, sought to replace Moise with Haitian-American pastor Christian Emmanuel Sanon. Chaos Since Moise’s death, Haiti has only spiralled deeper into chaos. No election has been held and Moise has not been succeeded as president. Henry, who now leads an opposition party, postponed elections indefinitely, citing a devastating earthquake and the growing power of heavily armed criminal gangs, for which he has sought foreign aid. Gangs run rampant in large swaths of the country, now estimated to control most of the capital, and homicides more than doubled last year to nearly 4,800, according to a United Nations report released this month. Kenya is preparing to lead a UN-ratified international force to support Haitian police, though prior abuses by foreign missions and allegations against Henry’s government have left countries wary of volunteering support. Adblock test (Why?)