Kamis, 28 September 2023

Where is China’s defense minister? Beijing keeps silent




China has declined to comment on its defense minister’s whereabouts as questions swirl over his status a month after he was last seen in public.

Gen. Li Shangfu’s absence since late August has fueled rumors about his fate, but during a regular press briefing Thursday, Defense Ministry spokesperson Wu Qian said he was “not aware of the situation” when asked whether the minister was under investigation.

Li’s disappearance follows a series of unexplained personnel shakeups that have roiled the upper ranks of China’s ruling Communist Party this summer, including the ousting in July of former Foreign Minister Qin Gang.

Days later, Beijing announced the replacement of two generals leading the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, the military branch overseeing the nation’s arsenal of nuclear and ballistic missiles.

Asked by CNN how the absence of Li and the replacement of the two generals had impacted operations, Wu referred to comments he made to reporters last month – when he vowed to “investigate every case and crack down on every corrupt official,” according to Reuters at the time.

The disappearance of two high-profile ministers in quick succession has raised questions about the governance of leader Xi Jinping, who has made China’s political system even more opaque as he concentrates power and enforces strict party discipline.

Senior Chinese officials have vanished from public view in the past, only to be revealed months later by the Communist Party’s disciplinary watchdog that they’ve been detained for investigations. Such sudden disappearances have become a common feature in Xi’s anti-corruption campaign and gaps in information are not uncommon within the Chinese political system.

Where is Li Shangfu?
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Li was taken away in September by authorities for questioning, citing a person close to decision making in Beijing.

The Financial Times reported that the US government believes the defense minister has been placed under investigation, citing American officials. Neither of the reports cited a reason for the investigation.

When asked earlier this month by reporters, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he didn’t have “anything to offer” on the matter, which he added was an issue for the Chinese government to decide.

Li, who was sanctioned by the US in 2018 over China’s purchase of Russian weapons, is still listed as China’s defense minister, one of its five state councilors, and a member of the party’s powerful Central Military Commission (CMC).

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Selasa, 19 September 2023

Azerbaijan launches operation against Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh




Azerbaijan’s defense ministry said Tuesday it had begun an “anti-terrorist” campaign in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, as Armenian media and local authorities reported heavy bombardment of the regional capital of Stepanakert.

Two civilians, including a child, were killed, and 11 people were injured, amid shelling by the Azerbaijan military, according to Gegham Stepanyan, the Ombudsman in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, has been the cause of two wars between the neighbors in the past three decades, most recently in 2020.

Tensions have been simmering around the region for months, after Azerbaijani troops blockaded the Lachin corridor in December, cutting off the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia and preventing the import of food to its roughly 120,000 inhabitants.

Russian peacekeepers, who deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh under the terms of the 2020 ceasefire, have been tasked with preventing a fresh conflict breaking out. But Moscow has been accused of being unable or unwilling to intervene to protect Armenia, its long-term ally, in the face of continuing aggression from Azerbaijan.

‘Systematic shelling’
The Azerbaijani defense ministry demanded in a statement Tuesday “the complete withdrawal of ethnic Armenian troops and the dissolution of the government in Stepanakert.”

“The only way to achieve peace and stability in the region is the unconditional and complete withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan and the dissolution of the puppet regime,” it said.

“As part of local anti-terrorist measures carried out in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, regular long-term firing points and military installations of the Armenian armed forces were destroyed by precise strikes by units of the Azerbaijan Army,” the ministry added.

The ministry claimed its army had come under “systematic shelling” from Armenia’s armed forces, adding that its action was designed to “neutralize their military infrastructure” and “ultimately restore the constitutional order of the Republic of Azerbaijan.”

“Only legitimate military targets are being incapacitated,” it added.

It said Armenia had fortified its positions, “bringing units to a high level of combat readiness,” and that mines had been planted in previously de-mined areas. The ministry also claimed one Azeri vehicle had struck a mine and two civilians had been killed.

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Sabtu, 16 September 2023

Derna valley was once a ‘paradise.’ Now there’s nothing left but devastation




Tarek Fahim was taking videos of the water filling behind the dam in the Derna valley in Libya late Saturday night. Up until 1:30 am, Storm Daniel was just wind and rain. When he went home an hour later, it took very little time between the moment he heard the dam burst and the gushing water flooding his street.

“The amount of water and the cars it was pushing felt like an earthquake,” he says.

He moved the family to the rooftop, and they climbed up a water tank as the water kept rising. They survived. “Maybe one percent of those who lived on ground floors survived,” he says of his neighborhood around al-Fanar street.

When the water level gradually receded, he went back down to check on his neighbors, “but there was meter-high mud on the street,” he recalls. “Just in 15 buildings around me, 33 people died,” he says. As he starts listing the names of the friends he lost, he breaks down in tears.

Across the eastern Libyan city of Derna, thousands died and thousands more are still missing after a catastrophic flood hit the city in the early hours of Sunday.

Tarek’s bare feet are covered in mud from walking through the side streets helping neighbors go through the wreckage of their homes. The trauma and loss are visible on every face. Men sit in front of their hollowed-out houses, some silent, others sobbing.

Across the street Talal Fartas is going through what remains of his jewelry store, picking gold necklaces and bracelets from the mud. “The safe was swept away. Everything is gone,” he says.

Only few traces are left behind of what the shops lining the street used to sell. Pieces of metal dangle from the ceilings of gutted out stores. Vehicles are wedged in terraces and entrances of the low-rise buildings. A purple lunch box sits under a mangle of trees and light post. A couple of blocks up north, the rubble piled up along the sides of the road rises higher and higher until it becomes a swath of debris.

When the two dams outside the city burst, they unleashed a powerful flood that leveled residential blocks. The eastern and western parts of Derna are now separated by a wasteland of destruction that runs across the city all the way to the Mediterranean.

Rescuers go through the collapsed buildings looking for survivors with little hope. Almost all they find are dead bodies and more are believed to be under the heaps of crumbled cement.

Back at al-Fanar street, a man calls for help to dig out the bodies of four children from under the mud.

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Rabu, 13 September 2023

Morgues overwhelmed in Libya as rescuers search for thousands missing after flood

 


Libya is racing to bury its dead as bodies pile up in the streets of Derna, the northern coastal city devastated by flooding after a torrential downpour smashed through two dams, washing homes into the sea.

Morgues are full in hospitals that remain out of service despite the desperate need to treat survivors of a disaster that has far so killed at least 5,000 people, according to hospital staff and officials from Libya’s eastern parliament-backed government.

Around 10,000 more are missing, potentially either swept out to sea or buried beneath rubble that’s strewn throughout the city once home to over 100,000 people, authorities say.

More than 30,000 people have been displaced by the flooding in Derna, the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Libya said Wednesday.

The significant damage to infrastructure in the region has made some stricken regions inaccessible to humanitarian groups. Only two out of the seven entry points to Derna now available.

Emergency teams are searching through piles of debris for survivors and bodies, as officials attempt to honor Islamic beliefs that the dead should receive burial rites within three days.

“The Martyrs’ committee (has been set up to) identify the missing people and to implement procedures for identifying and burial of in accordance with Sharia and legal laws and standards,” said Libya’s minister of state for cabinet affairs, Adel Juma.

The destruction caused by Storm Daniel has made a mammoth mission even harder for rescuers trying to clear roads and debris to find survivors.

The storm took out communications, frustrating rescue efforts and causing anxiety among family members outside Libya who are waiting for news of missing loved ones.

Ayah, a Palestinian woman with cousins in Derna, said she has been unable to contact them since the floods.

“I’m really worried about them. I have two cousins who live in Derna. It seems all communications are down and I don’t know if they are alive at this point. It is very terrifying watching the videos coming out of Derna. We are all terrified,” she told CNN.

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Senin, 11 September 2023

Trump is explaining exactly how wild and extreme his second term would be




Donald Trump is conjuring his most foreboding vision yet of a possible second term, telling supporters in language resonant of the run-up to the January 6 mob attack on the US Capitol that they need to “fight like hell” or they will lose their country.

The rhetorical escalation from the four-times-indicted ex-president came at a rally in South Dakota on Friday night where he accused his possible 2024 opponent, President Joe Biden, of ordering his indictment on 91 charges across four criminal cases as a form of election interference.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a darkness around our nation like there is now,” Trump said, in a dystopian speech in which he accused Democrats of allowing an “invasion” of migrants over the southern border and of trying to restart Covid “hysteria.”

The Republican front-runner’s stark speech raised the prospect of a second presidency that would be even more extreme and challenging to the rule of law than his first. His view that the Oval Office confers unfettered powers suggests Trump would indulge in similar conduct as that for which he is awaiting trial, including intimidating local officials in an alleged bid to overturn his 2020 defeat.

Characteristically, Trump also turned criticism of his behavior against his political foes, implicitly arguing that the true peril for America’s political freedoms did not spring from his attempt to invalidate a free and fair election, but from efforts to make him face legal accountability for doing so. “It’s really a threat to democracy while they trample our rights and liberties every single day of the year,” he said.

“This is a big moment in our country because we’re either going to go one way or the other, and if we go the other, we’re not going to have a country left,” he told supporters in South Dakota. “We will fight together, we will win together and then we will seek justice together,” he added. This followed a March rally in which he billed his 2024 campaign and potential second term as a vessel of “retribution” for supporters who believe they’ve been wronged.

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Jumat, 08 September 2023

Trump slams Georgia grand jury report




Donald Trump sharply criticized the final report from the Georgia special grand jury that investigated the former president and his allies' attempts to overturn the 2020 election, saying in a social media post Friday that the report lacks credibility.

“The Georgia Grand Jury report has just been released. It has ZERO credibility and badly taints Fani Willis and this whole political Witch Hunt. Essentially, they wanted to indict anybody who happened to be breathing at the time. It totally undermines the credibility of the findings, and badly hurts the Great State of Georgia, whose wonderful and patriotic people are not happy with this charade of an out of control 'prosecutor' doing the work of, and for, the DOJ. ELECTION INTERFERENCE!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. 

Among other details, the full report revealed that the grand jury recommended charges against Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and former GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis did not charge them in the indictment last month against Trump and 18 other co-defendants.

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Jumat, 01 September 2023

Thai King cuts ousted former leader Thaksin Shinawatra’s 8-year prison sentence to 1 year




Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn has reduced the prison sentence of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra from eight years to one, in a remarkable turn of events that caps an extraordinary decades-long political saga.

Thaksin, the head of a famed political dynasty who had dramatically returned to Thailand from a 15-year self-imposed exile last week, submitted a request for a royal pardon, the country’s outgoing justice minister confirmed Thursday.

A statement published by Thailand’s Royal Gazette Friday said the King had acknowledged Thaksin’s piea and, “with His Majesty’s graciousness, he has reduced the sentence of the male inmate Thaksin Shinawatra to one year.”

The statement added that Thaksin’s service to the country, loyalty to the monarchy and that he had “confessed and regretted” his past actions was taken into account.

“He used to hold a position as the prime minister of Thailand who served the country and his works benefited the people and the country. He holds his loyalty to the monarchy. And when he was charged and convicted by the court to the mentioned imprisonment sentence, with his respect in the justice system, he confessed and regretted to his acts,” the statement said.

“He was willing to serve the sentence while being elderly and having health issues and sickness that must be treated by specialist doctors.”

The statement did not say when exactly Thaksin had submitted his plea for a royal pardon. The king’s command was dated August 31 and undersigned by outgoing Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, a former army chief who toppled an elected government once run by Thaksin’s sister.

Thaksin, 74, was prime minister from 2001 until he was ousted in a military coup in 2006. He returned to Thailand briefly in 2008 before fleeing the country over a corruption conviction.

For the first time since he fled, Thaksin flew back to Thailand in a private jet on August 22, where he was met in Bangkok by his family and supporters.

He was taken into custody and sentenced by the Supreme Court to eight years in prison for conflict of interest, abuse of power and corruption during his time in power. Thaksin was found guilty of the charges in absentia during his exile.

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‘It’s chaos:’ Starving Gazans dig for food, supplies under the rubble

One man carries six jars of cooking oil as he struggles to walk across the rubble. Two little girls run as they each carry stacks of white p...