Israel reportedly pushing deal for captive release without ending war
A US envoy is visiting Egypt, Qatar to try to broker the deal as pressure rises on Tel Aviv to bring captives home. Israel is reported to have readied a proposal for a two-month truce that aims to secure the release of captives held by Hamas but without ending the war in Gaza. US and Israeli press reported late on Monday that Tel Aviv is optimistic that it could conclude a deal with the help of the US. The plan comes against a backdrop of intensified combat in southern Gaza as well as increasing pressure on the Israeli government to find a deal to bring the captives home. US website Axios quoted Israeli officials as saying that the proposal has been presented by Tel Aviv to Hamas through Qatari and Egyptian mediators. It includes a two-month truce during which all Israeli detainees in Gaza will be released. Israel’s Channel 13 reported that the principles of the deal consist of three to four stages of captive release. Meanwhile, the Israeli military would withdraw from some areas of the enclave, but without ending the war. Reports suggest that the US is pushing the plan with regional partners. The White House’s Middle East coordinator, Brett McGurk, is now in Cairo to discuss the deal, with plans to continue to Qatar. Phases Reporting from East Jerusalem, Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker said that the proposal included plans to release captives in phases, starting with women and those over 60. A second phase would see a handover of female soldiers and men deemed as non-soldiers by Hamas. The third phase would include male soldiers and bodies remaining inside Gaza. Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers could be redeployed away from some urban areas to allow Palestinians to return home. “Of course, the question is what do they have to return to,” said Dekker. Families of captives and supporters shout slogans as they protest to call for the release of captives taken during the deadly October 7 attack by the Palestinian armed group Hamas, in Tel Aviv, Israel, January 6, 2024 [Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters] In Israel, the families of the captives have been applying increasing pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree a deal. Amid the ongoing bombardment of Gaza, they worry that time is running out to bring their relatives home alive. On Monday, dozens of relatives stormed a parliamentary committee meeting, demanding that the government seek a deal to win their loved ones’ release. Stuttering A weeklong truce in November saw the release of around 100 of the 240 or so captives taken by Hamas on October 7. Efforts to put another pause or even ceasefire in place have been stuttering since. But Israel is facing mounting impatience as it ignores calls to scale back its onslaught. The EU on Monday gave Tel Aviv’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz short shrift as he pitched the construction of an artificial island in the Mediterranean near the Gaza coast as a hub for the enclave’s commercial relations with the rest of the world. But facing political pressure and demands from hardline coalition partners, Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed to press ahead with the offensive until Hamas is crushed. The reports of the truce negotiations come amid an intensification of fighting in southern Gaza, with the hundreds of civilian casualties adding to the death toll in the enclave, which local authorities now say tops 25,000. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said early on Tuesday that its headquarters in Khan Younis had been shelled. Writing on X, the NGO said that the shelling coincided with “intense gunfire from Israeli drones, resulting in injuries among internally displaced individuals who sought safety on our premises”. UN agencies and aid groups have sounded the alarm about the growing threat of disease and famine in Gaza, where 1.7 million people are estimated to have been displaced from their homes. That makes a cessation of fighting ever more urgent, and there will be hope that alongside the pressure from the families, recent troop losses could give added momentum to efforts towards dialling down the conflict. On Tuesday, the Israeli military reported it lost at least 21 soldiers in one of the deadliest attacks on its troops since the war began three months ago. Adblock test (Why?)
US and UK carry out new attacks against Yemen’s Houthis
NewsFeed The US and UK militaries say they have conducted new air attacks against Houthi weapon sites in Yemen, as the group continues to target Red Sea shipping in protest over Israel’s war in Gaza. Published On 23 Jan 202423 Jan 2024 Adblock test (Why?)
Nikki Haley receives all 6 votes from lone New Hampshire town participating in midnight voting tradition
A small unincorporated community in northern New Hampshire was the only region of the Granite State to cast ballots during a midnight voting tradition for Tuesday’s primary and all six registered voters voted for former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley. The six Dixville Notch voters cast their ballots after polls opened at midnight in a tradition that began with the 1960 election. Two of the other communities that typically cast the state’s first ballots decided not to participate in midnight voting this year. Hart’s Location and Millsfield will instead hold voting for the primary during daytime hours. DOWN TO TRUMP IN THE POLLS ON PRIMARY EVE, HALEY VOWS SHE’S ‘IN THIS FOR THE LONG HAUL’ “Our population is getting older in Millsfield, and getting up at midnight to go vote is getting harder and harder for our population,” Millsfield election official Shawn Cote previously told WMUR. The process of casting and counting votes in Dixville Notch is quick given the low number of voters and the results are immediately reported across the country. Four of the voters in the community’s midnight voting were registered Republicans while the other two were independents. NANCY MACE ENDORSES TRUMP OVER HALEY AFTER GOP PRIMARY BECOMES 2-PERSON RACE In New Hampshire, registered Republicans and Democrats must vote on a nomination from their respective party, but voters who do not have a party affiliation must select either a Republican or Democrat ballot at the time of voting. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Ballots in New Hampshire will not include President Biden, who did not file for the primary because New Hampshire scheduled its Democratic primary ahead of South Carolina, which the Democratic National Committee had wanted to hold the party’s first primary this election because of its more diverse population. Still, New Hampshire Democrats are promoting a write-in campaign to elect Biden. Fox News’ Krista Garvin contributed to this report.
New Hampshire showdown: Why Trump is connecting with voters and Haley and DeSantis have not
I could give you 30 different reasons why Ron DeSantis flamed out before today’s New Hampshire primary. Plenty of media folks are delighting in kicking him when he’s down – worst campaign of all time and so on – and his relentlessly negative coverage, augmented by his own mishandling of the media, is a factor. WHY DESANTIS CANCELING SUNDAY SHOWS (INCLUDING MINE) LED TO HIS QUITTING THE RACE But it comes down to something more existential. One exchange on my show, about Donald Trump, has stuck with me. I was talking about both MSNBC and CNN dumping out of Trump’s Iowa victory speech, and the former president declaring this was so unfair that NBC and CNN (which does not have a federal license) should be taken off the air. Now I agree with Trump on the substance–and so does new CNN boss Mark Thompson, who told his staff the network should have carried more of the speech, according to the New York Times–but not on the remedy. Networks shouldn’t be kicked off the air because a president doesn’t like the coverage. I asked my liberal “Media Buzz” guest, Leslie Marshall, about Trump’s threat, and she said his supporters “want to be entertained by him using nicknames for everyone,” or in the case of mocking Nikki Haley’s Indian name, “racial shading.” BRET BAIER: WORDS BETWEEN TRUMP AND HALEY WILL LIKELY GET ‘UGLIER’ Trump, like him or loathe him, is an entertainer. He’s got that New York timing. He may ramble, but he puts on a show. What journalists hear as authoritarian language, dictator for one day, his loyalists view as shtick. When Trump was indicted four times, media types called him a threat to democracy, but it boosted him in the polls. For the record, Marshall said later that “Ron DeSantis clearly does not have that likability factor.” Now you can call the Florida governor a hard worker, a policy wonk, a committed conservative with a strong record in his state. But he’s a serious and sober guy, not particularly entertaining, and he doesn’t like talking about himself, for instance that he served in the military in Iraq. One thing DeSantis and Haley, who is a very disciplined, stick-to-the script campaigner, is that neither has much of a sense of humor. Neither one is “entertaining.” Now the counter-argument here is that government is serious business, that this isn’t a vaudeville show and policies affect all Americans. But first you have to win an election, and making a connection with the voters has always been crucial, especially in the television age. UNDECLARED NH VOTERS CAN ATTEND THE GOP OR DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY: SHANNON BREAM Meanwhile, with Haley trailing Trump by double digits in most polls, the media are now focusing on whether the former president, at 77, is mentally confused. This is an obvious attempt to even the scales a bit with President Biden, who has long been known for gaffes and traces of a stutter but has at 81 clearly appeared more frail and sometimes mixed-up than three years ago. So now there’s a concerted effort, especially on some MSNBC shows, to paint Trump as losing it as well. Past glitches – such as saying Obama when he meant Biden, saying Biden could be starting World War II – didn’t get much traction. But when Trump, at some length, mentioned Nikki Haley’s name three times and then said she was responsible for security on Jan. 6 and turned down his offer of 10,000 soldiers, he was clearly talking about Nancy Pelosi. (She disputes that story, by the way.) And that obvious misstatement gave Haley an opening to question his “mental fitness,” more sharply than in her standard riff about not wanting two 80-year-olds running for president. This is the kind of aggressive attack that Haley should have been making long before the final weekend before the voting. She said yesterday that the entire “media elite” was urging her to back out. Just when the primary finally gets entertaining, Haley, the last woman standing, is still trailing Trump by double digits in most polls – and this feels like too little too late.
Israel, Gaza, Germany and the genocide in Namibia
[unable to retrieve full-text content] Germany joins Israel to deny the war in Gaza constitutes genocide against the Palestinians, but Namibia disagrees.
Race to find dozens trapped in southwest China landslide
Rescuers have been racing to find dozens of people trapped after a landslide struck a remote and mountainous part of southwestern China, killing at least 12. The predawn landslide buried 18 homes when it hit Zhenxiong county, in Yunnan province, on Monday. More than 24 hours after the disaster, state news agency Xinhua reported that rescue workers were in a “race against time” on Tuesday to find those still missing, after a night of subzero temperatures. Yunnan is among several provinces in China currently experiencing bitterly cold temperatures, according to the National Meteorological Centre. “Search and rescue efforts persisted through the night,” firefighter Li Shenglong told Xinhua. Two hundred emergency workers, including soldiers, were dispatched to the scene – a rural area surrounded by towering peaks dusted with snow – along with dozens of fire engines and other equipment. The area is covered in thick snow and rescuers were “using all kinds of tools to search for survivors” amid the debris, Xinhua reported. Wu Junyao, the director of the natural resources and planning bureau of Zhaotong, which includes the affected villages, said the disaster “resulted from a collapse in the steep cliff area atop the slope”. Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered “all-out” rescue efforts. Landslides are common in Yunnan, a far-flung region where steep mountain ranges abut the Himalayan plateau. China has experienced a string of natural disasters in recent months, some following extreme weather events such as sudden, heavy downpours. Rainstorms last September in the southern region of Guangxi triggered a mountain landslide that killed at least seven people, according to media reports. In August, heavy rains sparked a similar disaster near the northern city of Xi’an, killing more than 20 people. Adblock test (Why?)
Pakistan ex-PM’s party loses election symbol. Will it hurt its prospects?
Electoral symbols play an important role in a democratic process. As Pakistan gears up for general elections due next month, posters with party symbols can be seen plastered on utility poles and roadside walls across cities and towns. Political parties have kicked off campaigning, plastering walls with propaganda posters but the symbol of what many believe is the country’s most popular party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), seems to be missing, thanks to an unprecedented crackdown on the PTI and its jailed leader, former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Khan’s party has been barred from using the party symbol in the elections scheduled for February 8. PTI members and supporters say the blocking of its symbol, a cricket bat, is a ploy by the military-backed caretaker government to ensure the party’s defeat. Meanwhile, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, has also alleged that seven of his party’s national and provincial assembly candidates have being assigned the wrong electoral symbols in the eastern Punjab province. Bhutto claimed the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) acted under pressure from former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who has been accused of cutting a deal with the country’s military that controls most levers of power from behind the scenes. Sharif, who returned to Pakistan in October after several years of self-imposed exile, has rejected the allegations. So why are party symbols important, and will the ban on the PTI symbol harm the party? Why did PTI lose its bat? The ECP on December 22 omitted PTI’s bat symbol on the technical grounds that the party had not held intra-party elections – required under law. This rendered the party ineligible for having a symbol for the 2024 elections. An intra-party election conducted by the PTI on June 8, 2022 was not recognised by the ECP on the grounds that it was not “just and fair”. The ECP also passed similar orders against 13 marginal political parties. Critics and supporters of PTI have deemed it a deliberate attempt to curtail the party’s success in the elections. “The cricket bat was unjustly revoked through an illegal order,” PTI lawyer Syed Ali Zafar said. An attempt by the PTI to get the ban overturned failed as Pakistan’s Supreme Court last week upheld the election commission’s decision, which is significant to the PTI because it is reminiscent of Khan’s success as a former cricketer. Khan, who was the national team captain when the country won its only World Cup trophy in 1992, leveraged his successful sporting career to gather popular support as a politician. Supporters of Imran Khan install a giant bat symbol along a roadside in Karachi in May 2013 [File: Athar Hussain/Reuters] Arif Rafiq, president of Vizier Consulting, a New York-based political risk advisory company, said the decision to block PTI symbol is “politically motivated”. “They are part of a pattern of the Pakistani state using administrative measures, along with coercion, to deny PTI a pathway toward electoral victory,” he said, referring to the high popularity of Khan. Nadia Malik, Head of Geo Television’s election cell, says that intra-party elections are a farce in Pakistan but the ECP did not hold other parties accountable, letting them scot-free. “Losing a symbol is not something new in Pakistan but PTI can not even choose a different symbol for all their candidates,” as the deadline for that has passed, Malik told Al Jazeera. The ECP has defended its decision saying the elections will be further delayed if the process of changing symbols continues. To counter the confusion that this can create, the party’s social media team is working on a portal that allows voters to search for names and symbols of PTI’s candidates, Malik added. “PTI is really good at social outreach in that way.” But one in every two Pakistanis does not own a smartphone, making it difficult for the PTI to reach out to voters. “The end result of the ECP’s decision, and the Supreme Court’s ludicrous affirmation of it, is the disenfranchisement of millions of voters and the liquidation of the country’s largest party in the run-up to the polls,” Asad Rahim Khan, a constitutional expert, said. “Flaws in intra-party elections don’t merit such a disproportionate punishment anywhere in the actual law. Even otherwise, Pakistan’s Constitution and clearly developed jurisprudence favour political parties and their right to contest.” PTI Social Media Team has created a portal to search for candidate name & symbol. See video below showing a search for “NA1” & the results with candidate name & symbol. We are just waiting for data for each candidate before we go LIVE! #ChallengeAccepted #PrimeMinisterImranKhan pic.twitter.com/BhI4bOfIfJ — PTI (@PTIofficial) January 14, 2024 The story behind the PTI bat The slanted cricket bat symbol has a ubiquitous association with Khan’s party. However, the bat was not the party’s first symbol. Malik from Geo TV said that the party’s first symbol was a lamp. Before the 2013 elections, PTI wanted to use a double-balance scale as its electoral symbol, since it is the symbol of justice and “Insaf” roughly translates from Urdu to justice. However, the scales were the symbol of the Jamaat-e-Islami party in the 1970 general election. The legal battle for the symbol between the two parties ultimately tipped in Jamaat-e-Islami’s favour due to its historical claim on the scales. After the 1977 general election, the military government of General Zia-ul-Haq deleted several electoral symbols from the approved list of symbols, the scales being one of them. These were restored by the ECP in 2010. Why are electoral symbols significant? The symbols that look like mere minimalist line work hold high stakes in Pakistan. Malik, the journalist from GEO, pointed out that around 40 percent of Pakistan’s population is uneducated and voters who can not read rely on symbols to identify the party they want to choose on the ballot. “Even those people who can read names are not always as involved in campaigning, but they know their party’s symbol,” she said. She added that parties’ electoral campaigning
Myanmar army plane crashes at Mizoram’s Lengpui airport; six people injured
According to the information received from the Mizoram DGP, the plane was small, and 14 people were on board with the pilot.
China races to find landslide survivors in sub-zero temperatures
At least nine people have been confirmed dead in the pre-dawn disaster in southwestern Yunnan, with dozens still missing. Rescuers in China have stepped up efforts to find dozens of people who were buried in a landslide in southwestern Yunnan. The landslide struck two villages in mountainous Zhengxiong County in the early hours of Monday morning when many people were asleep, burying 18 homes and at least 47 people. At least nine people had been found dead, according to state broadcaster CCTV, while two were pulled from the rubble and taken to hospital. “The mountain just collapsed, dozens were buried,” a witness, named Gu, told state-owned television. He said four of his relatives were among those beneath the rubble. “They were all sleeping in their homes,” he said. State news agency Xinhua said rescue workers were in a “race against time” to find those missing after a night of sub-zero temperatures. Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered “all-out” rescue efforts. The agency quoted Wu Junyao, the director of the natural resources and planning bureau of Zhaotong, which includes the affected villages, as saying the disaster “resulted from a collapse in the steep cliff area atop the slope”. Hundreds of rescue workers including soldiers have been sent to the area, which is known for its steep rugged mountains that are covered with snow in winter. The two affected villages were built towards the foot of the mountains and more than 500 residents were evacuated after the disaster. State media showed rescuers climbing over concrete blocks and collapsed roofs dusted with snow to find survivors. Luo Dongmei was sleeping when the landslide struck. “I was asleep, but my brother knocked on the door and woke me up. They said there was a landslide and the bed was shaking, so they rushed upstairs and woke us up,” 35-year-old Luo told the Associated Press news agency. Luo, her husband and their three children were evacuated to a school along with many other residents. Luo said she had been unable to contact her sister and aunt, who lived closer to the site of the landslide. “The only thing I can do is to wait,” she said. Rescuers search through the remains of village houses to try and find survivors [AFP] Yunnan is among several provinces in China currently experiencing bitterly cold temperatures, according to the National Meteorological Centre. Last week, rescuers evacuated tourists from a remote skiing area in northwestern China where dozens of avalanches triggered by heavy snow had trapped more than 1,000 people for a week. The avalanches blocked roads, stranding both tourists and residents in a village in the Xinjiang region, close to China’s border with Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan. There was no immediate official explanation for what might have caused Monday’s landslide. Zhengxiong County lies about 2,250km (1,400 miles) southwest of Beijing, with altitudes ranging as high as 2,400 metres (7,900 feet). Landslides, often caused by rain or unsafe construction work, are not uncommon in China. At least 70 people were killed in landslides last year, including more than 50 at an open pit mine in the Inner Mongolia region. Adblock test (Why?)
UK’s upper house votes to delay plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda
House of Lords defies Rishi Sunak by voting to delay ratification of treaty with Kigali. The United Kingdom’s upper house of parliament has voted to delay Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s controversial plan to deport some asylum seekers to Rwanda. The vote by the unelected House of Lords on Monday came despite Sunak urging its members to back his plan, which he has characterised as the will of the people. The upper house voted 214 to 171 to delay the ratification of a related treaty London signed with Kigali until the government can demonstrate that Rwanda is a safe country for asylum seekers to be sent to. The chamber does not have the power to block the so-called Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill indefinitely, but could delay the legislation for up to a year. The move comes after the more powerful House of Commons on Wednesday narrowly passed the bill after some Conservative MPs threatened to vote against the government on the grounds the legislation was not robust enough to survive legal challenges. Sunak has made the controversial immigration plan a key plank of his bid to return to power in an expected general election this year that the centre-left Labour Party is strongly tipped to win. Sunak introduced the legislation after the UK Supreme Court last year ruled that the safety of asylum seekers deported to Rwanda could not be guaranteed. The bill would make it harder for courts to challenge the Rwanda policy by allowing the government to set aside certain provisions of human rights law and asking the House of Commons to declare by majority vote that the African country is safe for asylum seekers. Sunak has said he wants deportations to begin within months to meet his pledge to “stop the boats” carrying asylum seekers across the English Channel. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson first announced the Rwanda plan in 2022 to deny people arriving by “irregular means” the opportunity to apply for asylum in the UK. The first Rwanda-bound flight from the UK was halted in June of that year after a last-minute intervention by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which ruled that one of the asylum seekers on board was at “real risk of irreversible harm” in the East African nation. Adblock test (Why?)