Gaza and Palestine were dominant themes at UN. Will it make a difference?
New York City – Gaza and Palestine have been the dominant topics at the United Nations as world leaders convened at the 80th General Assembly (UNGA) in New York over the past week. In their speeches, UN Security Council (UNSC) meetings, sideline events and media briefings, many countries – from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to France to Malaysia – called for an end to Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the establishment of a Palestinian state. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list But as most of the world rallied around Palestine in the first week of the UNGA, Israel killed at least 661 Palestinians in Gaza and pushed on unabated with its ground assault on Gaza City. Diplomats and analysts say rhetoric and diplomatic moves alone, including the recognition of a Palestinian state, are not enough to move the needle on the ground, or improve the situation of Palestinians under bombardment and occupation. Rights advocates are seeking an arms embargo and sanctions against Israel to force it to end its abuses. Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla, executive secretary of the Hague Group – a coalition of countries pushing for such measures against Israel – said the “situation keeps getting worse” because Israel continues to have access to weapons and resources. “The economic might of the genocidal machine is still not weakened. Israel continues to receive arms,” Gandikota-Nellutla told Al Jazeera. Palestine recognition During the UNGA, dozens of countries convened for a summit to push for the two-state solution, while several Western states, including Australia, France and the United Kingdom, formally recognised Palestine. Advertisement As that meeting was under way, protesters outside the UN complex banged on pots to decry the deadly hunger in Gaza. Maamoun Hussein, one of the demonstrators, said the growing international recognition of the state of Palestine is a positive development, but it must be followed by a meaningful push to hold Israel accountable. “It’s a testament to the perseverance of the Palestinian people for over 78 years of genocide and ethnic cleansing,” Hussein told Al Jazeera, referring to the growing number of countries now recognising Palestinian statehood. “But these countries have the power to do an arms embargo. They have the power to put pressure on Israel. Instead, all the Arab countries now are at risk. The entire world is at risk because they’re changing the entire legal system to suit Israel, which is a terrorist, genocidal state.” While ravaging Gaza and intensifying attacks and annexation efforts in the occupied West Bank, Israel has also carried out attacks against Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran and Qatar in recent months. The Israeli military is also widely believed to have struck a Gaza-bound humanitarian boat in a Tunisian port. Gandikota-Nellutla also said that while recognising Palestinians’ right to self-determination is an important step, more must be done. “The risk is that countries stop here – that countries pat themselves in the back and say, ‘We’ve done our bit’, and move on without cutting off the material arteries of the genocide at this moment,” she told Al Jazeera. ‘The economic might of the genocidal machine is still not weakened,’ says Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla, executive secretary of the Hague Group [Ali Harb/Al Jazeera] At a UNSC meeting to discuss the crisis, Algerian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmed Attaf warned on Tuesday that global stability will depend on whether the international community can rein in Israel and ensure the establishment of a Palestinian state based on borders as they stood before the 1967 war. “There is no space for denial that what Gaza has been enduring is a comprehensive war of annihilation,” Attaf said, citing the recent UN Commission of Inquiry’s report that accused Israel of genocide. ‘We are not yet there’ A day later, diplomats representing countries from across the world met to renew calls for protecting Palestinian children, about 20,000 of whom have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since October 2023. “This suffering is not inevitable. It is a result of choices, of actions, and of inaction – and choices can change,” Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot said at the event. Advertisement On the sidelines of the UNGA, Brazil, Jordan and Spain, along with UN chief Antonio Guterres, also led a push to rally political and financial support for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which Israel has unilaterally banned. Al Jazeera asked Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, whether the diplomatic efforts in support of Palestine in New York are making a tangible difference in the condition of Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. “There have been a lot of acknowledgement-outrage combination, but it hasn’t gone far beyond that,” Lazzarini said. “The real question is: How will this be translated into necessary influence impacting the situation on the ground? We are not yet there,” he added. Lazzarini said the crisis in Gaza has reached the dire state it is in today because of “impunity” for Israel’s actions, suggesting that Palestinian lives have been “devalued” in the eyes of the world. On Friday, delegates of more than 50 countries walked out of the UNGA hall as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crime charges, took the podium. Nearby, representatives of 34 countries met as part of the Hague Group, and discussed possible policies to stop the atrocities in Gaza, including imposing an energy embargo on Israel and blocking Israeli weapons shipments from their ports. The meeting included countries spanning four continents, such as Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, Iceland, Malaysia, Mexico, Namibia, Spain and Qatar. For Gandikota-Nellutla, the Hague Group’s chief, international collective action is the way towards ending Israeli impunity. “We want to grow country by country, until we engulf the whole world – until every supply chain that brings any weapons of death to Israel becomes inaccessible to Netanyahu and his government,” she told Al Jazeera. Adblock test (Why?)
‘Cruel joke’: How Indian H-1B dreams are crash landing after Trump fee hike
New Delhi, India — Meghna Gupta* had planned it all – a master’s degree by 23, a few years of working in India, and then a move to the United States before she turned 30 to eventually settle there. So, she clocked countless hours at the Hyderabad office of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT firm and a driver of the country’s emergence as the global outsourcing powerhouse in the sector. She waited to get to the promotion that would mean a stint on California’s West Coast. Now, Gupta is 29, and her dreams lie in tatters after US President Donald Trump’s administration upended the H-1B visa programme that tech firms have used for more than three decades to bring skilled workers to the US. Trump’s decision to increase the fee for the visas from about $2,000, in many cases, to $100,000 has imposed dramatic new costs on companies that sponsor these applications. The base salary an H-1B visa employee is supposed to be paid is $60,000. But the employer’s cost now rises to $160,000 at the minimum, and in many cases, companies will likely find American workers with similar skills for lower pay. This is the Trump administration’s rationale as it presses US companies to hire local talent amid its larger anti-immigration policies. But for thousands of young people around the world still captivated by the American dream, this is a blow. And nowhere is that more so than in India, the world’s most populous nation, that, despite an economy that is growing faster than most other major nations, has still been bleeding skilled young people to developed nations. Advertisement For years, Indian IT companies themselves sponsored the most H-1B visas of all firms, using them to bring Indian employees to the US and then contractually outsourcing their expertise to other businesses, too. This changed: In 2014, seven out of the 10 companies that received the most H-1B visas were Indian or started in India; In 2024, that number dropped to four. And in the first six months of 2025, Gupta’s TCS was the only Indian company in the top-10 H-1B visa recipients, in a list otherwise dominated by Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Apple. But what had not changed until now was the demographic of the workers that even the above US companies hired on H-1B visas. More than 70 percent of all H-1B visas were granted to Indian nationals in 2024, ranging from the tech sector to medicine. Chinese nationals were a distant second, with less than 12 percent. Now, thousands across India fear that this pathway to the US is being slammed shut. “It has left me heartbroken,” Gupta told Al Jazeera of Trump’s fee hike. “All my life, I planned for this; everything circled around this goal for me to move to the US,” said Gupta, who was born and raised in Bageshwar, a town of 10,000 people in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. “The so-called ‘American Dream’ looks like a cruel joke now.” Priscilla Chan, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, businessman Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and businessman Elon Musk, among other dignitaries, attend Donald Trump’s inauguration in Washington, DC, US, January 20, 2025 [Shawn Thew/Pool via Reuters] ‘In the hole’ Gupta’s crisis reflects a broader contradiction that defines India today. On the one hand, the country — as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government frequently mention — is the world’s fastest-growing major economy. India today boasts the world’s fourth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), behind just the US, China and Germany, after it passed Japan earlier this year. But the country’s creation of new jobs lags far behind the number of young people who enter its workforce every year, widening its employment gap. India’s biggest cities are creaking under inadequate public infrastructure, potholed roads, traffic snarls and growing income inequality. The result: Millions like Gupta aspire to a life in the West, picking their career choices, usually in sectors like engineering or medicine, and working to get into hard-fought seats in top colleges – and then migrating. In the last five years, India has witnessed a drastic rise in the outflow of skilled professionals, particularly in STEM fields, who migrate to countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the US. Advertisement As per the Indian government’s data, those numbers rose from 94,145 Indians in 2020 to 348,629 by 2024 — a 270 percent rise. Trump’s new visa regime could now effectively close the pipeline of those skilled workers into the US. The fee hike comes on the back of a series of tension points in a souring US-India relationship in recent months. New Delhi is also currently facing a steep 50 percent tariff on its exports to the US — half of that for buying Russian crude, which the US says is funding the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine. Ajay Srivastava, a former Indian trade officer and founder of the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), a Delhi-based think tank, told Al Jazeera that the hardest-hit sectors after the new visa policy will be “the ones that Indian professionals dominate: mid-level IT services jobs, software developers, project managers, and back-end support in finance and healthcare”. For many of these positions, the new $100,000 fee exceeds an entry-level employee’s annual salary, making sponsorship uneconomical, especially for smaller firms and startups, said Srivastava. “The cost of hiring a foreign worker now exceeds local hiring by a wide margin,” he said, adding that this would shift the hiring calculus of US firms. “American firms will scout more domestic talent, reserve H-1Bs for only the hardest-to-fill specialist roles, and push routine work offshore to India or other hubs,” said Srivastava. “The market has already priced in this pivot,” he said, citing the fall of Indian stock markets since Trump’s announcement, “as investors brace for shrinking US hiring”. Indian STEM graduates and students, he said, “have to rethink US career plans altogether”. To Sudhanshu Kaushik, founder of the North American Association of Indian Students, a body
UN sanctions “exacerbate” Iran’s economic situation
[unable to retrieve full-text content] “Countries like China, Russia or others who have been opposing the process [of imposing sanctions].”
Hamas tells Israel to cease Gaza City attacks as captives’ lives in danger
Israeli tanks are advancing in Tal al-Hawa, Sabra and other neighbourhoods of Gaza City in their ground invasion. Published On 28 Sep 202528 Sep 2025 Click here to share on social media share2 Share Hamas has issued what it calls a “warning” that the lives of two captives held in Gaza City are in danger as Israeli tanks push deeper inside several neighbourhoods of the besieged urban centre, where tens of thousands of Palestinians are trapped by Israel’s ground invasion and bombardment. The Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian group, said on Sunday that contact has been lost with fighters holding Omri Miran and Matan Angrest after “brutal military operations and violent targeting in the Sabra and Tal al-Hawa neighbourhoods during the last 48 hours”. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list “The lives of the two captives are in real danger, and the occupation forces must immediately withdraw to the south of Road 8 and halt aerial sorties for 24 hours starting from 18:00 this evening (15:00 GMT), until an attempt is made to extract the two prisoners,” it said. Hamas released a “farewell picture” of captives in Gaza this month in another attempt to stop the Israeli army as it systematically destroys Gaza City and displaces hundreds of thousands of starving Palestinians once again. Israel said 48 captives remain in Gaza, 20 of whom are alive. But the country has refused to stop the war despite being increasingly accused of committing genocide and as Israeli families call and protest for a comprehensive deal to end the war and bring back all captives. Their pleas have not been heeded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government, and relatives and supporters are blaming the government for their prolonged captivity. Advertisement The political wing of Hamas said in a statement earlier on Sunday that the group has not received any new ceasefire or peace proposals from mediators Qatar and Egypt, even as United States President Donald Trump continues to predict an imminent ceasefire, which he has done several times in recent weeks. The group confirmed that negotiations remain halted after Israel tried to assassinate top Hamas leaders in Doha on September 9 as they gathered to review a new ceasefire proposal presented by Trump. But Hamas said it is “ready to study any proposal from the brother mediators with positivity and responsibility, in a manner that preserves the national rights of our people”. Far-right Israeli ministers said on Sunday that they oppose a 21-point plan presented by Trump and any other deal that would put an end to the war before eliminating Hamas. In a post on X, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said: “Mr. Prime Minister, you have no mandate to end the war without a decisive defeat of Hamas.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he would “never agree to a Palestinian state – even if it is difficult, even if it has a price, and even if it takes time”. More than 66,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war in October 2023, according to the enclave’s Ministry of Health. Dozens more Palestinians were killed in air strikes and shelling or while seeking aid on Sunday, including a child in a bombardment of the Sabra neighbourhood. Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis city reported an infant died due to malnutrition and inadequate medical treatment. Israeli tanks are also inching closer towards the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which used to be the largest medical complex in Gaza but now lies mostly in ruins after several previous Israeli sieges. Muhammad Abu Salmiya, director of the hospital, said on Sunday that his team is committed to keeping the facility running as long as possible as patients and displaced people are sheltering there. Adblock test (Why?)
Denmark bans drone flights after latest drone sightings at military bases
Drone sorties over past week have caused the temporary closures of several Danish airports, raising security concerns amid war in Ukraine. Denmark has barred civilian drones from its airspace before a European Union Summit, following reported sightings of drones at several military locations overnight on Saturday. The Nordic country has been on alert following a string of drone incidents over the past week, which have led to the closure of several airports. The ban will remain in place from Monday through Friday of the coming week, when Denmark, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU for the second half of this year, will be hosting European leaders. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list “We are currently in a difficult security situation, and we must ensure the best possible working conditions for the armed forces and the police when they are responsible for security during the EU summit,” Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said in a statement on Sunday. Police officers stand guard after all traffic was closed at the Copenhagen Airport due to drone sightings on September 22, 2025. [Ritzau Scanpix/Steven Knap/Reuters] In a statement earlier in the day, the country’s Ministry of Defence said it had “several capacities deployed” after the drone sighting, without elaborating on the deployment, the number of drones or the locations. The latest incident comes a day after the NATO military alliance announced it was upgrading its mission in the Baltic Sea with an air defence frigate in response to the drone incursion in Denmark. In a statement sent to the Reuters news agency, NATO said it would “conduct even more enhanced vigilance with new multi-domain assets in the Baltic Sea region”. Advertisement It added that the new assets included “intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms and at least one air-defence frigate”. Copenhagen Airport was closed on Monday for several hours after several large drones were observed in its airspace. In the days that followed, five smaller Danish airports, both civilian and military, were also shut temporarily. ‘A hybrid attack’ The Danish transportation ministry said “all civilian drone flying in Danish airspace will be prohibited … to remove the risk that enemy drones can be confused with legal drones and vice versa. “We cannot accept that foreign drones create uncertainty and disturbances in society, as we have experienced recently. At the same time, Denmark will host EU leaders in the coming week, where we will have extra focus on security,” Danish Minister for Transport Thomas Danielsen said in a statement. “A violation of the prohibition can result in a fine or imprisonment for up to two years,” according to the statement. Denmark will host EU leaders on Wednesday, followed by a summit on Thursday of the wider, 47-member European Political Community, set up to unite the EU with other friendly European countries after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Denmark has called the drones part of a “hybrid attack”. It has stopped short of saying definitively who it believes is responsible, but Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has suggested it could be Moscow, calling Russia the primary “country that poses a threat to European security”. The Kremlin denies blame. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said last week that Russian involvement could not be ruled out – an accusation that Moscow has already rejected. A German air defence frigate arrived in Copenhagen on Sunday to assist with airspace surveillance during the high-profile events. Meanwhile, the incursions come at the same time Estonia accused Russia last week of three MiG-31 fighter jets violating its airspace for 12 minutes before NATO Italian fighter jets escorted them out. However, Russia has also denied that its jets have violated Estonia’s airspace. Speaking at the UN on Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov hit out at accusations from the West, blaming it for scaremongering about the possibility of a “third world war”. “Russia is being accused of almost planning to attack NATO and EU countries. President [Vladimir] Putin has repeatedly debunked these provocations,” he said. Adblock test (Why?)
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,312
Here are the key events on day 1,312 of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Published On 28 Sep 202528 Sep 2025 Click here to share on social media share2 Share Here is how things stand on Sunday, September 28 : Fighting Ukrainian long-range drones hit an oil pumping station in Russia’s Chuvashia region, causing a fire and forcing the suspension of operations, an official from the Ukrainian security service, the SBU, told the Reuters news agency. Russian forces had taken over three more villages in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Dnipro regions, amid a grinding Russian advance in the area, Russia’s military said in a post on Telegram. Moscow and Kyiv have traded blame for attacks on the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which has forced the facility off the main power grid for the last four days. Regional security NATO has announced that it is upgrading its mission in the Baltic Sea with an air-defence frigate and other military assets deployed to the region, after several days of unidentified drone sightings at airports in Denmark and military bases. Earlier, Latvia and Lithuania called on NATO to increase its military protection of the Baltic States, citing alleged Russian violations of the military alliance’s airspace. Norway has launched an investigation into “possible sightings of drones” near its biggest military base, Orland, where its advanced F-35 fighter jets are stationed, a military spokesman said. Military aid Advertisement Politics and diplomacy Any aggression against Russia “will be met with a decisive response”, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov warned NATO and the European Union in his address at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York on Saturday. He warned that Moscow is prepared to act if provoked. In separate remarks to journalists, Lavrov also suggested that Germany is returning to its Nazi past, in what was seen as a personal attack on German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, as his government moves to ramp up defence spending amid growing threats from Moscow. Russia has fallen short of the 93 votes necessary to get elected to the UN aviation agency’s governing council, in the latest rebuke following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia received 87 votes during the agency’s assembly in Montreal. South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs Cho Hyun met Lavrov in New York, where he expressed Seoul’s “grave concern” over military cooperation between Russia and North Korea. Thousands of North Korean troops have been sent to aid Russia in its war against Ukraine, and Pyongyang has bolstered Moscow with a huge transfer of weapons. Adblock test (Why?)
Thousands protest livestreamed murder of 2 women, young girl in Argentina
Drug gang suspected in torture and murder of two young women, and a 15-year-old girl, in crime that shocks Argentina. Clashes have erupted between demonstrators and police as thousands protested in Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, to demand justice over the torture and killing of two young women and a teenager, which was livestreamed on social media by a purported drug gang. Thousands of protesters took to the streets on Saturday to denounce the killings that shocked Argentinians after it was revealed that the murders were perpetrated live on the Instagram platform and watched by 45 members of a private account, officials said. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list The bodies of Morena Verdi and Brenda del Castillo, cousins aged 20, and 15-year-old Lara Gutierrez were found buried on Wednesday in the yard of a house in a southern suburb of Buenos Aires, five days after they went missing. Investigators said the victims, thinking they were going to a party, were lured into a van on September 19, allegedly as part of a plan to “punish” them for violating gang code and to serve as a warning to others. Police discovered a video of the triple murder after a suspect in the disappearance of the three revealed it under questioning, according to Javier Alonso, the security minister for the Buenos Aires province. In the footage, a gang leader is heard saying: “This is what happens to those who steal drugs from me.” Argentinian media reported that the torturers cut off fingers, pulled out nails, and beat and suffocated the victims. While most of the protesters who took part in the demonstration on Saturday marched peacefully, some confronted police who responded by aggressively pushing them away using their batons and shields, according to video clips and images posted by the La Izquierda Diario online news site. Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Buenos Aires on Saturday to denounce the killings of Morena Verdi and Brenda del Castillo, cousins aged 20, and 15-year-old Lara Gutierrez, by a suspected drug gang [Luis Robayo/AFP] As they marched towards the Argentinian parliament with thousands of supporters, family members of the victims held a banner with their names, “Lara, Brenda, Morena”, and placards with the images of the three. Advertisement “Women must be protected more than ever,” Brenda’s father, Leonel del Castillo, was quoted by the AFP news agency as telling reporters at the protest. He had earlier said he had not been able to identify his daughter’s body due to the torture she had endured. “It was a narco-femicide!” read a sign at the protest. Another declared, “Our lives are not disposable!” The protesters also banged on drums as they marched and denounced the “inaction” of the administration of President Javier Milei against what they called the growing “narco” influence in the country. An image posted on social media showed protesters burning an image of Milei and other political allies of his administration. Antonio del Castillo, the grandfather of the slain 20-year-old cousins, was in tears, calling his granddaughters’ killers “bloodthirsty”. “You wouldn’t do what they did to them to an animal,” he said. On Friday, Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich announced the arrest of a fifth suspect in the case, bringing the total to three men and two women. The fifth suspect, accused of offering logistical support in the killing by providing a vehicle involved in the crime, was arrested in the Bolivian border city of Villazon . Authorities have also released a photograph of the alleged mastermind, a 20-year-old Peruvian, who remains at large. Meta, the parent company of Instagram, has disputed that the livestream occurred on its platform, according to the AFP, citing a company spokesperson. Adblock test (Why?)
Malaysia’s Mahathir at 100: Israel’s genocide in Gaza will not be forgotten
Putrajaya, Malaysia – When Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad turned 100 earlier this year, he marked his birthday by following a lifelong routine of discipline: he ate little, worked a lot, and did not succumb to the lure of rest. “The main thing is that I work all the time. I don’t rest myself,” Mahathir told Al Jazeera. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list “I am always using my mind and body. Keep your mind and body active, then you live longer,” he said. From a desk at his office in Putrajaya city, south of the capital, Kuala Lumpur, he spent his centenary like most days: penning his thoughts on the Malaysian economy, the country’s political situation and unfolding world events, particularly the situation in Gaza. Sitting down with Al Jazeera for an interview after recovering from a spell of exhaustion around the time of his birthday, Mahathir predicted that Israel’s ruthlessness against the Palestinian population of Gaza would be etched into world history. Israel’s killing of nearly 66,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the majority women and children, will be remembered for generations, possibly for “centuries”, Mahathir said. “Gaza is terrible. They killed pregnant mothers… babies just born, young people, boys and girls, men and women, the sick and the poor… How can this be forgotten?” he asked. “It will not be forgotten for maybe centuries,” Mahathir said. Describing the war in Gaza as a genocide that parallelled the killing of Muslims during the war in Bosnia in the early 1990s and the Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II, Mahathir said he was confounded that the people of Israel, who had experienced genocide, could, in turn, perpetrate a genocide. Advertisement “I thought people who suffered like that would not want to visit it on other people,” he said. Victims of a genocide should “not want to wish their fate to befall other people”. However, in the case of Israel, he was wrong, he said. Malaysia’s then-interim leader Mahathir Mohamad attends a committee on the exercise of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in February 2020 [Vincent Thian/AP] At the height of his power in the 1980s and 1990s, Mahathir earned a reputation on the world stage as an outspoken voice for the Global South, and a vocal critic of Western imperialism and its contemporary exploitation of developing countries through flows of financial capital. A staunch and lifelong supporter of the Palestinian cause, Mahathir was also roundly criticised for making “anti-Semitic” statements alongside his tirades against the West, particularly the United States. But, as he told Al Jazeera, he had sympathised deeply with the Jewish people when the horrors of the Nazis became known after World War II. Israelis, he now says, “did not learn anything from their experience”. “They want the same thing that happened to them, they want to do it to the Arabs,” he said. Now, the only “reasonable” way to address the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people is to implement a two-state solution, he added. But Mahathir said that such a solution – which received a major boost when Palestinian statehood was recently recognised by Australia, Belgium, Canada, France and the United Kingdom, among other countries – is still a very long way off, and he would not live to see it. “In my lifetime, no. Too short a time,” he said. China: ‘Number one country in the world’ A survivor of three heart attacks who pulled off a stunning political comeback in Malaysian public life when he was over 90 years of age, Mahathir held power for a combined total of 24 years, and earned himself what is likely to be the unassailable title as Malaysia’s longest-serving leader. When he was born on July 10, 1925, in the northern Malaysian state of Kedah, the king of England was George V, the grandfather of the late Queen Elizabeth II, and Malaysia was a British colony known as Malaya. He entered politics in the 1960s and became prime minister from 1981 to 2003 before stepping down, for the first time. He then made an astonishing return to power in 2018, when he led a coalition of opposition parties to beat the long-governing Barisan Nasional party to be re-elected prime minister at the sprightly age of 92, becoming the world’s oldest leader as a result. Advertisement But he stepped down under a cloud for the last time in 2020 after losing support due to political machinations from inside his own political party, Bersatu. A medical doctor by training, even Mahathir’s critics acknowledged that he laid the economic foundations that transformed Malaysia’s agricultural economy of the 1960s into the modern industrialised state of today, with the iconic twin Petronas Towers crowning the skyline of its thriving modern capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Despite having lived past the age when most politicians would have retreated from the spotlight, Mahathir at 100 remains as vocal, sharp and acerbic as ever. He also had some surprising memories of a bygone China and predictions about the future of the United States to share. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad works at his office in Putrajaya, Malaysia, in 2020 [File: Prime Minister Office via AP] Among his prized recollections are his impressions of visiting China in the 1970s, when it was “very poor” and there were few cars on the streets. Being Malaysia’s deputy prime minister at the time, authorities in Beijing rolled out the red carpet and their “Red Flag” model car to chauffeur him around, he said. “It was a very big Chinese car which China produced themselves. They called it The Red Flag,” Mahathir said, recounting how that vehicle was among the first to be independently produced by the Chinese. Fast forward to today, China’s economy has come a very long way, and so too has its thriving car industry, which is giving Western-produced cars a run for their money, particularly with electric vehicles. China’s surpassing of the US to become the
Venezuela Foreign Ministry warns of ‘immoral military threat’ from US
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil Pinto has told the United Nations General Assembly that the United States has an “illegal and completely immoral military threat hanging over our heads”, as reports emerge that the US is planning to escalate attacks on the South American country. Pinto told the gathering of UN member states on Friday in New York that his country was grateful for the support of governments and people “that are speaking out against this attempt to bring war to the Caribbean and South America”. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list The minister claimed US threats towards his country were aimed at allowing “external powers to rob Venezuela’s immeasurable oil and gas wealth”. He also accused Washington of using “vulgar and perverse lies” to “justify an atrocious, extravagant and immoral multibillion-dollar military threat”. Earlier on Friday, US broadcaster NBC News reported that US military officials are drawing up plans to “target drug traffickers inside Venezuela” with air attacks, citing two unnamed US officials. US President Donald Trump said last week that US forces had carried out a third strike targeting a vessel he said was “trafficking illicit narcotics”. At least 17 people have been killed in the three attacks. Experts have cast doubt on the legality of US attacks on foreign boats in international waters, while data from both the UN and the US itself suggest that Venezuela is not a major source of cocaine coming into the US, as Trump has claimed. In an address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump said of drug smugglers: ” To every terrorist thug smuggling poisonous drugs into the United States of America, please be warned that we will blow you out of existence.” By contrast, Colombian President Gustavo Petro used his UNGA address to call for a “criminal process” to be opened against Trump over the attacks on vessels in the Caribbean, which had killed Venezuelans who had not been convicted of any crime. Advertisement The US has so far deployed eight warships to international waters off Venezuela’s coast, backed by F-35 fighter jets sent to Puerto Rico, in what it calls an anti-drug operation. Washington has also refused an appeal for dialogue from Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, whom the Trump administration has accused of drug trafficking – a claim Maduro has strenuously denied. Maduro and his late predecessor, Hugo Chavez, had once been regular presences at the annual UNGA meetings taking place in New York, but Maduro did not come this year, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio describing him as a fugitive from justice over a US indictment on drug-trafficking allegations. Back home in Venezuela, Maduro has called for military drills to begin on Saturday, to test “the people’s readiness for natural catastrophes or any armed conflict” amid US “threats”. ‘Our fishermen are peaceful’ Venezuelan fishers who spoke to the AFP news agency said that the US strikes on Venezuelan boats have made them fearful to venture too far from shore. “It’s very upsetting because our country is peaceful, our fishermen are peaceful,” Joan Diaz, 46, told AFP in the northern town of Caraballeda. “Fishermen go out to work, and they [the US] have taken these measures to come to our … workplace to intimidate us, to attack us,” he said. Diaz said most fishers stay relatively close to shore, but that “to fish for tuna, you have to go very far, and that’s where they [the US forces] are.” A fisherman holds his catch at a harbour in Caraballeda, La Guaira State, Venezuela, on Wednesday [Federico Parra/AFP] Luis Garcia, a 51-year-old who leads a grouping of some 4,000 fishermen and women in the La Guaira region, described the US actions as “a real threat”. “We have nine-, 10-, 12-metre fishing boats against vessels that have missiles. Imagine the madness. The madness, my God!” he exclaimed. “We keep contact with everyone … especially those who are going a little further,” he said. “We report to the authorities where we are going, where we are, and how long our fishing operations will last, and we also report to our fishermen’s councils,” Garcia said. But, Garcia added, they would not be intimidated. “We say to him: ‘Mr Donald Trump, we, the fishermen of Venezuela … will continue to carry out our fishing activities. We will continue to go out to the Caribbean Sea that belongs to us.’” Adblock test (Why?)
US to revoke Colombian President Petro’s visa over actions in New York City
BREAKINGBREAKING, The Colombian leader was filmed joining thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters outside UN headquarters in New York. Published On 27 Sep 202527 Sep 2025 Click here to share on social media share2 Share The United States Department of State has said it will revoke the visa of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, citing his “reckless and incendiary actions”. “Earlier today, Colombian president [Gustavo Petro] stood on a NYC [New York City] street and urged U.S. soldiers to disobey orders and incite violence,” the department said in a post on X. Earlier today, Colombian president @petrogustavo stood on a NYC street and urged U.S. soldiers to disobey orders and incite violence. We will revoke Petro’s visa due to his reckless and incendiary actions. — Department of State (@StateDept) September 27, 2025 Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list The post did not provide specific details on Petro’s alleged offence, but footage circulated widely on social media showed the Colombian leader joining thousands of pro-Palestine protesters outside UN headquarters in New York on Friday. Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on the fourth day of the UN General Assembly’s General Debate on Friday, delivering a defiant speech as he told world leaders Israel must be allowed to “finish the job” in Gaza and lambasting Western states’ “disgraceful decision” to recognise a Palestinian state. This is a breaking news story. More to follow soon. Adblock test (Why?)