Sabtu, 25 November 2023

Russia launches biggest drone attack against Kyiv since start of war, Ukrainian officials say




Russia on Saturday launched its largest drone attack against Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv since the start of its invasion, according to local officials.

“A total of nearly 75 Shahed drones were launched from two directions – Primorsko-Akhtarsk and the Kursk region, Russia. The primary target was the city of Kyiv,” said Ukraine’s Air Force in a Telegram post, describing the attack as a “record number” of drones.

It said air defenses intercepted 71 of the Iranian-made drones across six regions of Ukraine – but the vast majority of the drones were intercepted in the Kyiv region.

“Anti-aircraft missile troops, tactical aviation, mobile fire groups, and electronic warfare units were involved in repelling the air attack,” said the air force. It added that a Kh-59 guided missile was also destroyed in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

Mykhailo Shamanov, a spokesman for the Kyiv city military administration, described several waves of drones coming from different directions toward the capital.

A CNN producer in Kyiv heard loud explosions and repeated bangs as drones buzzed overhead. The city’s military administration warned residents to take cover, saying: “A large number of enemy UAVs are entering Kyiv from different directions! We urge you to stay in shelters until the alarm goes off!”


It was the fourth drone attack on Kyiv this month, according to Shamanov.

At least two people were injured in Kyiv’s Solomianskyi district, according to Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko.

Several locations in Solomianskyi district caught fire, including a residential building and other non-residential premises, Klitschko said.

He added that the second floor of a five-story residential building in Solomianskyi district was damaged, and that the wreckage of downed drones fell on two residential buildings – one in the Dniprovskyi district, the other in the Holosiivskyi district.

In a separate statement, Serhii Popko, the head of the Kyiv city military administration, said a fire had broken out on the premises of a kindergarten after a drone was downed in the Solomianskyi district.Last winter, Russia carried out a sustained campaign of missile and drone attacks to cripple Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

The country’s energy ministry said this recent attack on Kyiv cut off power to an overhead line, leaving 77 residential buildings and 120 establishments without power in the city center.

Khmelnytskyi, in western Ukraine, has become a regular target of attacks, with the shockwaves from explosions damaging infrastructure in the region, including its nuclear power plant.

“Powerful explosions” shook the area near the Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said, with shockwaves shattering windows and temporarily cutting off power to some off-site radiation monitoring stations. IAEA experts at the plant were also told that two drones were shot down in close proximity to the site.

The IAEA said that the incident “once again highlighted the dangers to nuclear safety and security during the ongoing military conflict.”

While concerns remain about the country’s energy this winter, Ukraine’s largest private energy company DTEK has spent the last seven months restoring infrastructure, trying to boost output and bolster defenses at its facilities.

“We restored what could be restored, bought back-up equipment and installed defenses around power plants,” DTEK chief executive Maxim Timchenko told CNN earlier this month.

According to deputy chief of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence, Vadym Skibitsky, attacks to the country’s energy grid will be harder for Russia to pull off this time around.

Citizens have also been preparing for the possibility of a downed power grid. One company that installs energy storage systems nationally, has seen a significant rise in demand as people seek off-the-grid solutions, while businesses and companies buy generators and secondary batteries.

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Kamis, 23 November 2023

As Argentina heads to the polls, will a plan to ditch the peso for the dollar be a vote-winner?




When voters go to the polls this Sunday to elect Argentina’s next president, they will have to choose not only between two candidates, but between two opposite ideas of what type of country they want to live in.

That is an old adage in the era of identity politics. Still, it is hardly truer anywhere than in Buenos Aires, where Sergio Massa, the country’s current finance minister and a scion of the political establishment, is squaring off against Javier Milei, a former television pundit who entered politics less than 36 months ago.

The runoff between Massa, from the government coalition Union por la Patria (Union for the Homeland), and Milei of La Libertad Avanza (Freedom Advances), brings to an end a polarizing political campaign that has seen a series of surprising reversals, beginning in August when Milei stunned the country with a victory in a preliminary vote. After a weaker showing in the election’s first round in October, Milei was seen as being on the backfoot; this week he is once again leading in the polls.


One of the biggest questions now facing voters in this soccer-obsessed nation is: which of these two political polar opposites, both of whom played as goalkeepers in their youth, is the safest pair of hands for an economy currently suffering some of the highest inflation in the world?

More than 35 million Argentinians will be asked to cast their vote on Sunday on whether they trust Massa to lead the country out of its worst economic crisis of the past two decades through familiar policies that have failed before, or to dive into the unknown with Milei who proposes the radical idea of ditching the Argentinian peso in favor of the US dollar as national currency.

Argentine law prohibits the publication of opinion polls up to eight days ahead of the vote, but recent results from the past few weeks have shown the candidates almost neck-and-neck, and most analysts believe the election will be close.

On a personal level, the two candidates could not be more different: Massa is a family man who has dreamt of becoming a politician since he was 11 years old and has spent his career in and out of elected office; Milei lives alone with five English mastiffs – all genetically identical clones from a previous pet – and was elected to Congress in 2021.

Massa has carefully selected his political alliances to propel his ascent to government, while Milei rose to fame with political stunts, like wielding a chainsaw at rallies, and vowing to unleash a wrecking ball on the administrative class his opponent represents.

The Brave New World of Javier Milei
It is Milei who has attracted the most attention this year, not only because of his political style – on top of wielding chainsaws, he’s prone to raging outbursts and has embraced the nickname of ‘The Crazy One’ since climbing in the polls – but also because his proposed reforms would decisively shift Argentina to the right.

Outside of his controversial plan for dollarization, his political program includes slashing regulations on gun control and transferring authority over the penitentiary system from civilians to the military; both measures part of a tough-on-crime approach.

Milei proposes using public funds to support families who choose to educate their children privately – as a child he attended a Catholic private school in Buenos Aires – and privatizing the health sector, which in Argentina has always been in public hands in Argentina.

In recent weeks, Milei triggered an uproar when it appeared he was in favor of opening a market for organ transplants, although he later retracted his declarations.

He was similarly forced to apologize after calling Pope Francis, who is from Argentina and is seen as an icon of progressive politics in South America, “an envoy of Satan” in 2017. The apology, however, did not stop him from accusing Francis of siding with “bloodthirsty dictators” in an interview with right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson in September.

At university, Milei studied economics and idolized Milton Friedman, to the point of naming one of his beloved dogs after the free-market theorist.

But his most controversial proposal concerns public finances, as he plans to drastically cut government spending and, famously, eliminate the central bank and completely dollarize the country.

Can Argentina dollarize?
The idea to dollarize is not new – two other nations in Latin America, Ecuador and El Salvador, have dollarized in the past 30 years to combat inflation – but it’s untested in a country as big as Argentina.

Milei’s pitch is simple: Argentina’s rate of inflation, regularly among the highest in the world, is caused by politicians and central bankers who print new pesos to finance their social programs and electoral promises. As a result, the peso loses value, and everyone gets poorer. To fix the problem, Argentina should abandon the peso and adopt the dollar, whose value is set by the US Federal Reserve and cannot be printed at will.

The downsi

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Selasa, 21 November 2023

Premature, sick babies arrive in Egypt from Gaza after Al-Shifa evacuation


Twenty-eight premature babies arrived in Egypt in a convoy of ambulances from Gaza on Monday, according to an Egyptian government official, after the infants were evacuated from Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza.

Four mothers and six nurses accompanied the babies, who were sent to two separate hospitals in Egypt for treatment, the government source said.

On Sunday, 31 babies were transferred from Al-Shifa to Emirati Hospital in the southern city of Rafah, in an operation mashaled by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PCRS) and several other organizations. A CNN journalist at Rafah crossing reported the babies were greeted by hordes of medical professionals waiting with incubators to take them into care.

Two of the babies stayed at the Emirati’s ICU unit – with one infant said to be in good health – and a third baby did not transfer to Egypt as his parents are currently in northern Gaza. The other 28 will be treated at the Al-Arish Hospital in Sinai and the New Capital Hospital in Cairo.

“We have been waiting for them during the past few days. We have made all the preparations to receive the newborn babies with all the medical equipment needed for that,” a doctor at Al-Arish, named Ahmad, told Egyptian state broadcaster Al Qahera Monday, adding some of the babies are in need of “more advanced medical measures.”

A mother of one of the premature babies transferred to a hospital in Egypt said it was the “best place on earth” for her daughter to be. She told Egyptian state run pool that after a “difficult birth” on September 28, her daughter had been placed in an incubator in Al-Shifa.




“On the seventh of October, I was supposed to go and see my daughter. She was reliant on artificial respiration. Then they asked us to leave our house, then they bombed our house. So I went to Al Shifa Hospital. It never occurred to us that the hospital would be targeted and that those children would have to go through what they went through,” Lubna El-Seik said Monday.

After Israel announced a “precise and targeted” operation in Al-Shifa and fighting began in the hospital complex, Al Seik said her daughter’s condition deteriorated. “She relied solely on artificial oxygen,” she said.

Citing doctors at the Rafah hospital, the World Health Organization said earlier the babies were fighting serious infections and 11 were in “critical condition,” due to a lack of medical supplies at Al-Shifa.

UNICEF, which worked with UN agencies and PCRS to carry out the evacuation, warned Sunday that the babies’ condition was “rapidly deteriorating.” It said the evacuation took place in “extremely dangerous conditions” and followed the “tragic death of several other babies, and total collapse of all medical services at Al-Shifa.”

Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza, has become a flashpoint in Israel’s war in the besieged enclave. The Israeli military alleges the facility is being used by Hamas as a shield for its operations and raided the hospital last Wednesday. Hamas and hospital officials have denied Israel’s claims.

For days, relentless bombardment near the hospital trapped thousands of staff, patients and civilians sheltering inside, prompting public outcry, fueled by the details of the plight of newborn babies fighting for their lives.

The WHO described Al-Shifa as a “death zone” with corridors “filled with medical and solid waste,” after a United Nations team visited the hospital for an hour on Saturday to assess the deteriorating humanitarian situation.

Palestinian authorities said several newborns have died due to power outages and a shortage of medical supplies; hospital staff described having to move babies by hand from incubators after running out of fuel and wrapping them in foil to keep them warm.

Under growing pressure to provide evidence for its claim that Hamas is using Al-Shifa for military purposes, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Sunday released CCTV videos and still images it says show Hamas fighters bringing hostages into Al-Shifa on October 7, when Hamas launched its attack on southern Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and taking some 240 people into Gaza as hostages.

IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari presented two short videos, along with several still images, which he said show Hamas fighters moving the hostages – one Nepali, one Thai – through the hospital. CNN cannot independently verify the content of the videos and the stills.

Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalati, the head of the hospital’s burns unit, accused Israeli forces of pushing around staff, questioning them about Hamas and restricting staff movements after the raid last week.

“The common question (staff keep being asked): Do you know anything about the Hamas groups? Do you know anything about the tunnels within the hospital?” the doctor said.

Egyptian health workers were photographed on Monday standing beside ambulances and incubators, waiting for the babies to arrive at the Rafah border, which has been used to bring in limited aid and

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Minggu, 19 November 2023

Far-right outsider Javier Milei wins Argentina’s presidency




Javier Milei has won Argentina’s presidential elections in provisional results, wrenching his country to the right with a bombastic anti-establishment campaign against the backdrop of one of the world’s highest inflation rates.

His rival Sergio Massa conceded the run-off vote on Sunday evening in a brief speech even before official results were announced.

“Milei is the president elected for the next 4 years,” said Massa, adding that he had already called Milei to congratulate him.

Provisional results so far show Milei with over 55% of votes (13,781,154) with more than 94% of votes counted, according to data from the country’s National Electoral Chamber, which has not yet declared an official winner.

Milei’s victory marks an extraordinary rise for the former TV pundit, who entered the race as a political outsider on a promise to “break up with the status quo” – exemplified by Sergio Massa.

His campaign promise to dollarize Argentina, if enacted, is expected to thrust the country into new territory: no country of Argentina’s size has previously turned over the reins of its own monetary policy to Washington decisionmakers.

Milei has also said he would slash government spending by closing Argentina’s ministries of culture, education, and diversity, and by eliminating public subsidies. He is a social conservative with ties to the American right; he opposes abortion rights and has called climate change a “lie of socialism.”

Milei’s win will be closely scrutinized around the world as a potential sign of a resurgence of far-right populism. Milei has ties to the American right, and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro had endorsed Milei’s candidacy

Public opinion polls had shown the two candidates neck-and-neck in recent weeks.

Massa is a lifelong politician whose candidacy in contrast with Milei’s had come to represent Argentina’s political establishment. Inflation has reached painful heights during his tenture – 142% year on year, but Massa sought to argue that the government’s current actions were already paying dividends, with inflation for the month of October 35% lower than in September – an argument that appears to have failed to convince voters exhausted by a cost-of-living crisis.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

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Jumat, 17 November 2023

Keep an eye on the sky for the Leonid meteor shower this weekend




Up next for end-of-year celestial spectaculars is the Leonid meteor shower, set to produce bright meteors with persistent trains streaking across the night sky.

The Leonids have been active since early November but are expected to peak this weekend at 12:33 a.m. ET Saturday, according to EarthSky. Sky-gazers could see 10 to 15 meteors per hour in a dazzling display.

Those looking to catch a glimpse of a meteor from this shower are in luck because the moon will be in its waxing crescent phase, and there will not be as much light interference as there is with a full moon, said Dr. Sharon Morsink, a professor of physics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta. The moon will be 23% full on the night of the shower’s peak, according to the American Meteor Society.

While the peak is on Saturday, the same rates of meteors can be seen a few days before and afterward. The best time to view the shower will be after midnight in any time zone when the constellation Leo will be the highest in the sky, said Morsink, who also manages the university’s astronomical observatory. Leo is the meteor shower’s radiant, which is the point where the phenomenon appears to originate from, she explained.

“The most important thing is to get away from light pollution,” Morsink said. “You can still see some meteors if you’re in the city, but you’re not going to see anywhere near the number that you get to see if you get out of the city.”

Meteor storms from the Leonids
The Leonids are famed for generating meteor storms, the term used when a shower reaches rates of at least 1,000 meteors per hour, according to NASA.

Holding the record for the highest rate of meteors per hour seen in a meteor stream, the Leonids produced 144,000 meteors per hour in 1966, according to the American Meteor Society. The shower also produced outbursts of higher rates in 1999 and 2001, but the society does not expect another storm until 2099, when the Earth is predicted to encounter a dense cloud of debris from the parent comet, Tempel-Tuttle.

As the comet travels around the sun, it leaves a trail of rocks and dust that appears as the annual Leonid meteor shower when Earth moves through the debris while on its own orbital path.

Although a Leonid storm event is not predicted for this year, there is always a chance to see a few more meteors than the predicted rate, Morsink said.

“Getting out and seeing any meteor shower for the first time is always fun,” she said. “It’s just this interesting connection that we have with the whole solar system — here’s this comet that is far away from us that has been circling the sun for an incredibly long period, billions of years probably. … It’s a way for us to connect with things that are really far away.”

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Kamis, 16 November 2023

UK plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda blocked by Supreme Court




The UK’s controversial plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court Wednesday, dealing a potentially fatal blow to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s flagship migration policy and sparking a furious revolt from the right wing of British politics.

The UK’s highest court ruled unanimously against the government, siding instead with a previous appeals court ruling that found the policy – which has been roundly condemned by humanitarian bodies – was not lawful.

Its ruling unambiguously dismantled the government’s appeal, and scuppers an effort to fly asylum seekers who arrive in the UK illegally to the east African nation. The plan was first announced in April 2022, but has been wrought with legal challenges and has failed to deport a single person.

Sunak said on Wednesday evening that he would instead pursue a formal treaty with Rwanda – a move that would be subject to further legal scrutiny – and would introduce “emergency legislation” that would enable Britain’s parliament to unilaterally declare Rwanda a safe country.

Judges found that Rwanda could not be considered a safe country to which to send asylum seekers, as the government has argued, because there was a risk that genuine refugees would be returned to the countries they had fled from.

The ruling led to calls from the right of the Conservative Party to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), a prospect that has loomed over the government for months and has caused deep rifts between centrists and right-wingers in Britain’s ruling party.

Sunak did not endorse those calls on Wednesday but hinted that he would consider such a move if a re-worked policy was blocked. “I’m prepared to change our laws and revisit those international relationships to remove the obstacles in our way,” he said. “I will not allow a foreign court to block these flights.”

“There are substantial grounds for believing that asylum seekers would face a real risk of ill-treatment by reason of refoulement to their country of origin if they were removed to Rwanda,” the judges wrote in their ruling.

They found that Rwanda’s system for processing asylum claims, its poor human rights record, and its previous failure to comply with non-refoulement agreements meant that the UK government could not be sure asylum seekers would have their claims considered safely and properly.

And they noted that as recently as 2021, the British government criticized Rwanda for “extrajudicial killings, deaths in custody, enforced disappearances and torture.”

Sunak told lawmakers on Wednesday that a new treaty with Rwanda was already being worked on. He admitted earlier that the ruling “was not the outcome we wanted, but we have spent the last few months planning for all eventualities and we remain completely committed to stopping the boats.”

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Selasa, 14 November 2023

Israel says it is carrying out operation in Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital




The Israeli military is carrying out a “precise and targeted operation” in Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, according to a statement by the Israel Defense Forces, and Israeli tanks have moved into the hospital complex, a journalist inside the hospital told CNN.

“We can see them pointing the guns of the tanks toward the hospital. We are not sure whether soldiers are inside the hospital [buildings], but they are inside the complex with the tanks,” Khader Al Za’anoun, a reporter for the Palestinian news agency, Wafa, told CNN.

He said there were gunfire exchanges across the yard, and some of the windows in one of the buildings were out.

Conditions inside Gaza’s largest hospital have deteriorated in recent days as Israeli firepower pounds surrounding streets and remaining fuel reserves dry up, leaving the facility barely functioning.

Thousands of displaced people are taking shelter in the complex and doctors and journalists inside the hospital have described to CNN desperate efforts to keep premature babies alive, and limited procedures taking place by candlelight.

The Israeli operation is taking place in a “specified area” of Al-Shifa Hospital, according to a statement from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which again accused Hamas of continuing to use the hospital for military purposes – claims Hamas and hospital officials have repeatedly denied.

A doctor inside Al-Shifa told CNN they were given 30 minutes’ warning before the Israeli operation began.

“We were asked to stay clear of the windows and the balconies. We can hear the armored vehicles, they are very close to the entrance of the complex,” Dr. Khaled Abu Samra said.

Hundreds of staff and patients are still inside Al Shifa, according to the most recent reports from the hospital, along with several thousand who have sought shelter from Israel’s air and ground offensive.

The Israeli statement said, “The IDF is conducting a ground operation in Gaza to defeat Hamas and rescue our hostages. Israel is at war with Hamas, not with the civilians in Gaza.”

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Senin, 13 November 2023

Doctors race to save newborns as Israel says it’s battling Hamas around Gaza’s largest hospital




Premature babies at Gaza’s largest hospital are being wrapped in foil and placed next to hot water in a desperate bid to keep them alive in “catastrophic” conditions, the hospital director has warned, as Israeli firepower pounds surrounding streets and remaining fuel reserves dry up, leaving the facility unable to function.

Staff at the Al-Shifa hospital were fighting to keep the newborns alive and warm after oxygen supplies ran out and they had to move the babies by hand from the neonatal unit’s incubators to a different part of the hospital. Meanwhile, a reporter for the Al Arabiya network who was inside the hospital told CNN that people were trapped there, too scared to flee due to the heavy fighting.

“There is no more water, food, milk for children and babies… the situation in the hospital is catastrophic,” the director of the medical center, Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya, told CNN on Monday.

Images show several newborn babies who were taken from incubators at the hospital placed together in one bed.

The doctor on Sunday told Al Araby TV that several children had died in the intensive care unit and the nursery over the past two days amid Israel’s unrelenting bombardment and blockade of Gaza, an already impoverished and densely packed territory, following the October 7 attack on its territory by Hamas militants.

Dr Medhat Abbas, the director general of Gaza’s health ministry, told CNN that medical staff at Al-Shifa kept four infants alive after their mothers died by performing C-sections. “Now they have to make it without their mothers and without electricity… Can you imagine that?” he said in a voice note.“When these babies are born prematurely, to sustain their lives they need to have the same temperature of their mother. This temperature can only be offered in the incubators, which are heated properly,” Abbas said.

He warned that the situation would only worsen as winter draws in.

An Israeli military spokesperson told CNN on Saturday its forces were engaged in “ongoing intense fighting” against Hamas in the vicinity of the hospital complex, but denied firing at the northern Gaza medical center and rejected suggestions the hospital is under siege.

Asked about the hospitals in Gaza at an unrelated Oval Office event Monday, President Joe Biden told reporters, “hospitals must be protected.”

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Jumat, 10 November 2023

West Bank Palestinians face increasing restrictions and settler violence as Gaza war escalates

 


To be at work by 9 a.m., Joseph Handal gets up at 4:30 a.m., even though his workplace, a Franciscan church in the Old City of Jerusalem, is only a few miles from his home in Bethlehem.

The journey should take 25 minutes by road. But this is the occupied West Bank. Nothing is ever simple here.

“We wait for the bus and see if it comes. If it doesn’t come, the checkpoint is closed. Right now, it’s closed. But it may open later. Or maybe it won’t,” Handal told CNN, standing on the side of the road with a group of other workers.

As a Palestinian resident of the West Bank, Handal needs a permit to enter Jerusalem. He does have one – but whether he can make it to work depends on his ability to get through at least two Israeli checkpoints.

With Israel at war, he says this process has become a nightmare.

After Hamas launched its terror attack on Israel on October 7, killing more than 1,400 people and kidnapping some 240 others, Israel stepped up its security measures and began severely restricting the freedom of movement of Palestinian residents of the West Bank.

CNN has asked Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) for comment on the increased restrictions, but has not received a response.

Israel controls all entry and exit points to the West Bank through roadblocks and checkpoints which are staffed by soldiers and armed police. The security forces have always had the ability to close these checkpoints without warning but, since October 7, the closures have been more frequent and have lasted longer, residents and human rights watchdogs say.

For Handal and the tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians who need to get to Jerusalem for work, school, to go to a doctor or to visit family, this means daily uncertainty.

“It puts you in a position where you can’t even tell someone ‘I’ll meet you tomorrow,’ because you don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Mohammad Jamil, an Arabic teacher from a village near Hebron.

Jamil told CNN his son Ibrahim had missed two days of school in the past two weeks because the so-called Tunnels Checkpoint near Bethlehem was closed. Ibrahim, who is attending an elementary school in Jerusalem, said he didn’t mind. School is boring, he said, laughing.

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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...