Palestinians live in scarcity in Rafah as Israeli ground assault looms
Displaced Palestinians crammed into Rafah in southern Gaza are struggling to secure basic necessities as aid agencies and several world leaders have warned that a looming Israeli offensive on the city would have disastrous consequences. More than 1.5 million people, most of whom were displaced from other areas of Gaza, are sheltering in Rafah, where food and other essential supplies are scarce amid severe Israeli restrictions on the transport of food, fuel, water and humanitarian aid into Gaza. Despite the growing external pressure to halt the Rafah assault, Israel says it will press ahead with a ground offensive into the city near the border with Egypt to confront battalions of fighters from Hamas, the Palestinian group that governs Gaza. The United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine has slammed the planned Israeli ground offensive on the city. “Rafah stands as the last line of Palestinian existence in Gaza, amidst the relentless anguish faced by the people trapped therein,” Francesa Albanese said. Jagan Chapagain, the secretary-general and CEO of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), has warned that the healthcare situation in Gaza is “beyond critical” and the gap between needs and support available is widening. “Civilian population in Gaza have suffered enough, and healthcare stands as one of the last remaining beacons of hope,” Chapagain wrote on X, warning that many vulnerable people are lacking essential medical services. Israel has repeatedly carried out attacks on hospitals and medical complexes in Gaza since launching its war on the besieged coastal enclave on October 7, crippling health services for the Palestinians living there. According to the latest assessments from the World Health Organization (WHO), only 11 out of 36 hospitals in Gaza are partially functioning – five in the north and six in the south. On Sunday, the WHO chief said that Nasser Hospital, the main hospital in southern Gaza, was “no longer functional” after weeks of deadly Israeli siege and shelling. To compensate for the loss of essential healthcare services, Palestinian workers installed on Sunday a mobile hospital in Rafah. Adblock test (Why?)
Navalny’s widow Yulia will meet EU foreign ministers, Borrell says
Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the late Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, will meet European foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday, the European Union’s foreign policy chief said. The 47-year-old Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent domestic foe, died in a Russian jail on Friday after spending more than three years behind bars, prompting outrage and condemnation from Western leaders and his supporters. “On Monday, I will welcome Yulia Navalnaya at the EU Foreign Affairs Council,” Josep Borrell said late on Sunday on X. “EU Ministers will send a strong message of support to freedom fighters in Russia” and “honour” Navalny’s memory, he said. Earlier on Sunday, Navalnaya shared a post on Instagram that showed a picture of the two together, their heads touching as they watched a performance. “I love you,” she wrote in the post two days after her husband’s death. It brought a personal note to the loss she expressed more formally on a public stage just hours after Navalny’s passing was announced by the Russian prison service. Navalny, 47, fell unconscious and died on Friday after a walk at the “Polar Wolf” penal colony in the Arctic, where he was serving a three-decade sentence, the prison service said. There are still few details on why he died. On Friday afternoon, Navalnaya appeared before an audience of leaders, diplomats and other officials at the Munich Security Conference, saying she had weighed coming out on stage or immediately leaving to be with the couple’s two children, Daria and Zakhar, deciding her husband would want her to speak. If the news of his death was true, Navalnaya, 47, said, “I want Putin, his entire entourage, Putin’s friends, his government to know that they will bear responsibility for what they did to our country, to my family, to my husband”. Hundreds arrested Navalny’s sudden death was a crushing blow to many Russians, who had pinned their hopes for the future on Putin’s fiercest foe. Navalny remained vocal in his unrelenting criticism of the Kremlin even after surviving a nerve agent poisoning and receiving multiple prison terms. His death came a month before a presidential election in Russia that is widely expected to give Putin another six years in power. Hundreds of people in dozens of Russian cities streamed to ad-hoc memorials and monuments to victims of political repressions with flowers and candles on Friday and Saturday to pay tribute to the politician. In more than a dozen cities, police detained 366 people by Sunday night, according to the OVD-Info rights group that tracks political arrests and provides legal aid. More than 200 arrests were made in St Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, the group said. Among those detained there was Grigory Mikhnov-Voitenko, a priest of the Apostolic Orthodox Church – a religious group independent of the Russian Orthodox Church – who announced plans on social media to hold a memorial service for Navalny and was arrested on Saturday morning outside his home. He was charged with organising a rally and placed in a holding cell in a police precinct, but was later hospitalised with a stroke, OVD-Info reported. Courts in St Petersburg have ordered 42 of those detained on Friday to serve from one to six days in jail, while nine others were fined, court officials said late on Saturday. In Moscow, at least six people were ordered to serve 15 days in jail, according to OVD-Info. Questions remain Questions about the cause of death have lingered, and it remains unclear when the authorities may release Navalny’s body. More than 12,000 people have submitted requests to the Russian government asking for the politician’s remains to be handed over to his relatives, OVD-Info said on Sunday. Navalny’s team said Saturday that the politician was “murdered” and accused the authorities of deliberately stalling the release of the body, with Navalny’s mother and lawyers getting contradicting information from various institutions where they went in their quest to retrieve the body. Russian authorities viewed Navalny and his supporters as extremists with links to the CIA intelligence agency in the United States, which they say is seeking to destabilise Russia. Navalny always dismissed accusations that he was a CIA asset. Adblock test (Why?)
Haley: Congress is ‘lying to the American people’ by tying foreign aid to border security
GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley alleged Sunday that Congress is “lying to the American people” by tying foreign aid to border security. “Congress is failing because they’re making this sound like you have to choose between Ukraine and Israel, or securing the border. They are lying to the American people. That’s a false premise. We can do both,” Haley said during an appearance on ABC’s This Week. “Securing our southern border is priority number one, but making sure that we help Ukraine and Israel is also about preventing war. If we just supported Ukraine and Israel, that’s only 5% of our defense budget. If we supported Ukraine, Israel and secured the border, that’s less than 20% of Biden’s green subsidies. So this is not about the American people having to choose either/or. This is about Joe Biden and Congress understanding that they need to choose national security. They need to choose preventing war, and their job is to keep Americans safe, and they have to communicate that to the American people, and they are not doing that right now.” ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl pressed Haley on a message to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who said he wouldn’t be “rushed” into approving the $95.3 billion foreign aid package from the Senate that could come up for a vote in the lower chamber of Congress. But Haley said it was President Biden who needs to take a better approach. “Well first, I think you have to talk about what Joe Biden should be doing,” Haley said. “First of all, the reason you’re seeing America become more isolationist is that at no point has Joe Biden had a conversation with the American people about why Ukraine is important. At no point has he had a conversation with them – with the American people about the terrorist activity that’s happening with Israel and why Iran is so dangerous. At no point is he talking about the threat of China, and when you don’t talk about those things with the American people, they’re going to distance themselves from it. And so, Joe Biden has failed on that front. That has emboldened our enemies.” NATO CHIEF SAYS TRUMP CRITICISM ‘DOES UNDERMINE THE SECURITY OF ALL OF US’ As for former President Donald Trump, Haley contended he “doesn’t worry about Putin invading Ukraine,” so now the Russian president is putting soldiers around the Baltic region. “He’s moving in for the next era,” Haley said of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Let’s remind the American people that Putin said once he takes Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics are next. Now he is putting soldiers around those countries just as he did Ukraine. And if that happens, those are NATO countries, that immediately puts America at war. That is what we’re trying to avoid, and that’s why this aid package is so important. Ukraine’s not asking for troops. They’re just asking for the equipment and ammunition to win this war. They have a great fighting force. We need to give them what they need so that they can win so that we can prevent having to send any of our military men and women to fight.” SENATE PASSES CONTROVERSIAL FOREIGN AID BILL SENDING BILLIONS TO UKRAINE, ISRAEL AND TAIWAN If the $95 billion aid package was put to a vote, Johnson would find overwhelming support in the House from a coalition of Democrats and Republicans. Anchoring the package is $61 billion for Ukraine, mainly in the form of military equipment from the U.S. It also sends foreign assistance and humanitarian aid to Israel, Gaza and allies in the Indo-Pacific region, including Taiwan. Yet the reported death of Alexei Navalny, the most famous political prisoner in Russia and Putin’s biggest rival, did not appear to move Johnson to commit on Friday. “As Congress debates the best path forward to support Ukraine, the United States, and our partners, must be using every means available to cut off Putin’s ability to fund his unprovoked war in Ukraine and aggression against the Baltic states,” Johnson said in a statement. Haley, Trump’s former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina governor, will face off against Trump in the Feb. 24 South Carolina primary. On Sunday, she also tried to accuse Trump of siding “with a guy who kills his political opponents,” referring to Putin as, “a thug who arrests American journalists and holds them hostage.” CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Karl also asked Haley if she would endorse Trump if he becomes the Republican presidential nominee, but she deflected and stressed that if Trump is the nominee, that would ensure that current Vice President Kamala Harris is elected president in November. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Kansas City mayor accuses governor of racial ‘dog whistle’ for calling Super Bowl parade shooters ‘thugs’
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas accused Missouri Gov. Mike Parson of using a racial “dog whistle” when referring to the suspected shooters at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade as “thugs.” Lucas made the comment during an appearance on local radio show “Up to Date” on Friday. He told KCUR host Steve Kraske that he has seen similar incidents of alleged racism “time and again.” Following the shooting, Parson had said, “We can’t let some thugs just take over and ruin what happened.” “I have respect for the governor. We get along well,” Lucas told Kraske. “I disagree strongly with how he would describe that situation. I certainly do think this was criminal activity. It was lawlessness, and I think that that’s troubling. But ‘thugs’ is a dog whistle in the most classic sense.” CHIEFS RELEASE STATEMENT AFTER FATAL SHOOTING NEAR SUPER BOWL PARADE: ‘SENSELESS ACT OF VIOLENCE’ “I’ve seen this dog whistle time and again. There’s this kind of giant conservative theory on social media now that the reason these mug shots haven’t been shown is because the purported defendants are Black, and if it were a White defendant we would have just shown them. That is absolutely preposterous. There are protections to juveniles,” he added. CHIEFS FAN WHO TACKLED PARADE SHOOTING SUSPECT DESCRIBES ‘CHAOTIC’ SCENE: ‘I’VE GOT TO KEEP HIM DOWN’ Two minors were charged with gun-related offenses in relation to the shooting last week, which killed one person and injured 22 others. VETERAN DETAILS CHASING DOWN KANSAS CITY CHIEFS PARADE SHOOTER, CREDITS MILITARY TRAINING, ‘GUARDIAN ANGELS’ “Two juveniles were charged on Thursday, February 15, 2024, by the Office of the Juvenile Officer related to the incident at the Chiefs’ rally on February 14, 2024,” the 16th Judicial Circuit Court of Missouri announced Friday. “The juveniles are currently detained in secure detention at the Juvenile Detention Center on gun-related and resisting arrest charges,” the court added. At least 11 children were wounded during the shooting, but were expected to recover as of Wednesday night. Nine of them were shot, while two sustained other injuries. The court’s Friday statement added: “It is anticipated that additional charges are expected in the future as the investigation by the Kansas City Police Department continues.”
Hochul apologizes after saying Israel ‘has right to defend itself’ with ‘inappropriate’ Canada analogy
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul apologized for recent remarks in which she said Israel “has a right to defend itself,” while making what she later called an “inappropriate analogy” about Canada invading Buffalo, New York. “Call out Hamas for what it is, and it is a terrorist organization that must be stopped. No one, no country should live with that threat, that specter over them,” Hochul said Thursday during a speech at the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York, according to video shared on X. “And for those that don’t understand this dynamic here in our own state, in our own country, I’ll give you an example,” she said. “I’m from Buffalo, anybody realize that? If Canada someday ever attacked Buffalo, I’m sorry my friends, there would be no Canada the next day. Right? I love Canada, but we did have the War of 1812, and they did burn Buffalo… so there might be a little conflict here. But think about that. That is a natural reaction. You have a right to defend yourself and to make sure it never happens again. And that is Israel’s right.” Hochul later walked back her comments amid online backlash, apologizing in a statement to the New York Times on Friday. The governor claimed that she made an “inappropriate analogy” at the Jewish philanthropic event in New York City and apologized for her “poor choice of words.” SQUAD MEMBER TLAIB URGES MICHIGAN RESIDENTS TO VOTE ‘UNCOMMITTED’ IN DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY, SNUBBING BIDEN “While I have been clear in my support of Israel’s right to self-defense, I have also repeatedly said and continue to believe that Palestinian civilian casualties should be avoided and that more humanitarian aid must go to the people of Gaza,” she told the Times. The apology comes after New York State Assemblyman Zohran Kwame Mamdani criticized the governor in a post on X. “Governor Hochul justifying genocide, while laughing. Disgusting,” Mamdani wrote, reacting to the clip of her speech at the annual United Jewish Appeal-Federation Lawyers Division event at the Pierre Hotel. The UJA-Federation thanked Hochul in a post Thursday night for her attendance and “for always standing with the Jewish community and against antisemitism and hate in New York.” Hochul’s speech came as Israel has been ramping up strikes across Gaza in recent days. The United States, Israel’s top ally, meanwhile, said it would veto another draft U.N. cease-fire resolution. HOUSE COMMITTEE ASKS COLUMBIA FOR RECORDS OF FOREIGN DONATIONS, DEI AND MORE IN ANTISEMITISM PROBE The U.S. instead hopes to broker a cease-fire agreement and hostage release between Israel and Hamas, and envisions a wider resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called Hamas’ demands “delusional” and rejected U.S. and international calls for recognizing Palestinian statehood without going through negotiations without preconditions. His cabinet adopted a declaration Sunday saying Israel “categorically rejects international edicts on a permanent arrangement with the Palestinians” and opposes any unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, which it said would “grant a major prize to terror” after the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war. Netanyahu has vowed to continue the offensive until “total victory” over the Hamas terrorist group and to expand it to Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah, where more than half the enclave’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians has sought refuge, according to The Associated Press. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
‘Congress is demoralised, therefore…’: PM Modi addresses BJP cadre ahead of Lok Sabha elections
BJP cadre to work with renewed vigour and confidence for the next 100 days to reach out to new voters and win their confidence for the Lok Sabha election win.
US signals it will block proposed Gaza ceasefire resolution at UN
US says it would veto an Algerian draft resolution at the UN Security Council urging ‘immediate humanitarian ceasefire’. The United States has said it will block another resolution that will soon be presented at the United Nations urging a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. Algeria has proposed a new resolution be put to a vote on Tuesday at the UN Security Council (UNSC) that seeks an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian group that governs Gaza, while also demanding an “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages”. “Should it come up for a vote as drafted, it will not be adopted,” said US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield in a statement on Saturday. The envoy said the resolution could “run counter” to the goals that Washington says can be achieved through diplomacy in talks between Israel and Hamas that Qatar and Egypt are also mediating. A potential agreement, which has been under discussion for weeks, proposes a weekslong truce, during which Israeli captives held in Gaza can be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, and more humanitarian aid can enter the besieged Gaza Strip. The talks appeared to suffer a setback last week when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Hamas’s demands “ludicrous”, and mediator Qatar has said the discussions have not been promising. “The Council has the obligation to ensure that any action we take in the coming days increases pressure on Hamas to accept the proposal on the table,” Thomas-Greenfield said. The US has used its veto power to support Israel at the Security Council on dozens of occasions. It has done so several times since the start of the war on October 7, most recently in early December when it vetoed a ceasefire resolution presented by the United Arab Emirates. A UNSC resolution was passed in late December, but it was roundly criticised by human rights organisations and others for being a “watered down” version of the original proposal. The Algerian proposal for a vote on a new resolution comes amid growing fears that Israel is planning a ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, home to around 1.4 million Palestinians displaced from other parts of the territory since October. Aid agencies and the UN have warned that a ground assault on Rafah could be catastrophic. Adblock test (Why?)
Week in pictures: From elections in Indonesia to a film festival in Germany
[unable to retrieve full-text content] A roundup of some of last week’s events.
Brazil’s Lula compares Israel’s war on Gaza with the Holocaust
Israeli foreign minister says he will summon Brazil’s ambassador for a reprimand over the remarks which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as ‘disgraceful’. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has accused Israel of committing “genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and compared its war on Gaza with Adolf Hitler’s campaign to exterminate Jewish people. “What’s happening in the Gaza Strip isn’t a war, it’s a genocide,” Lula told reporters in Addis Ababa where he was attending an African Union summit on Sunday. “It’s not a war of soldiers against soldiers. It’s a war between a highly prepared army and women and children,” added the Brazilian president. “What’s happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people hasn’t happened at any other moment in history. Actually, it has happened: when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.” Led by Hitler, the Nazis systematically killed six million Jews during World War II. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said he would summon Brazil’s ambassador for a reprimand over the remarks. “No one will compromise Israel’s right to defend itself,” Katz said on X, adding that the envoy would be summoned on Monday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the comments as “disgraceful and grave”. “This is a trivialisation of the Holocaust and an attempt to attack the Jewish people and the right of Israel to self-defence. Drawing comparisons between Israel and the Nazis and Hitler is to cross a red line,” Netanyahu said in a statement. Lula, 78, had condemned the Hamas-led October 7 attack on southern Israel as a “terrorist” act the day it happened. But he has since grown vocally critical of Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza. At least 1,139 people were killed in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, mostly civilians, according to an Al Jazeera tally of Israeli official figures. Hamas members also took about 250 people captive, 130 of whom are still in Gaza, including 30 who are presumed dead, according to Israeli authorities. Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza has killed at least 28,858 people, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian authorities. Lula criticised Western countries’ recent decisions to halt aid to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, after Israel accused some of its employees of involvement in the Hamas-led attack. Lula, who met with Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh Saturday on the sidelines of the summit, has said Brazil will increase its own contribution to the agency and urged other countries to do the same. “When I see the rich world announce that it’s halting its contributions to humanitarian aid for the Palestinians, I just imagine how big these people’s political awareness is and how big the spirit of solidarity in their hearts is,” Lula said. “We need to stop being small when we need to be big.” He reiterated his call for a two-state solution to the conflict, with Palestine “definitively recognised as a full and sovereign state”. Adblock test (Why?)
Rep. Mike Turner says Biden admin was ‘sleepwalking’ on Russian nuclear threat before his surprise disclosure
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, says President Biden’s administration was “sleepwalking” on Russia’s nuclear threat before he disclosed it last week. Turner notified all congressional lawmakers of Russian intentions to send nuclear weapons into space on Wednesday, and called on Biden to declassify information about the threat. He worried that the White House had been “sleepwalking into an international crisis.” “What I have called for is for the administration to declassify this, and my concern is that this is kind of like the Chinese spy balloon and the administration is kind of hiding perhaps, you know, some inaction,” Turner told NBC News on Saturday. “Everyone who’s looked at it uses the same language that I have – that it is a very serious threat,” Turner added. “We met with [national security adviser] Jake Sullivan, and he began to lay out a plan that hopefully would begin to address this.” BIDEN’S MEMORY STRUGGLES COULD IMPERIL NATIONAL SECURITY, DEFENSE EXPERTS WARN: ‘NOT ONLY WEAK BUT CONFUSED’ Sullivan had expressed surprise at Turner’s decision to sound the alarm last week, saying he had already scheduled a meeting with Turner and other members of the congressional Gang of Eight days ahead of time. US LAUNCHES MISSILE-DETECTING SATELLITES INTO ORBIT AS CONCERNS ABOUT RUSSIA IN SPACE GROW “That’s been on the books, so I am a bit surprised that Congressman Turner came out publicly today, in advance of a meeting on the books,” Sullivan said during a White House press briefing. Details of the Russian threat soon began to filter through to the press, painting a picture of an adversary capable of disabling U.S. military satellites and other critical space-based infrastructure. HOUSE INTEL CHAIR TURNER WARNS OF ‘SERIOUS NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT,’ URGES BIDEN TO DECLASSIFY Sources told Fox News digital last week that the Russian technology has not yet been deployed. Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report