Wednesday, October 5, 2022
Pictures of the Navy's $13B aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford - Business Insider
World - Latest - Google News
October 05, 2022 at 09:26AM
https://ift.tt/NgeV29X
Pictures of the Navy's $13B aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford - Business Insider
World - Latest - Google News
https://ift.tt/cOy6dWB
Tuesday, October 4, 2022
"They can't arrest all of us": Why Iran's defiant young protesters "want the change today" - CBS News
Unprecedented scenes are emerging from the Islamic Republic of Iran: Schoolgirls across the country are flouting the law, some uncovering their hair, and many chanting, "We don't want the Islamic Republic!" and even, "Khamenei is a murderer!"
It is a rare and highly risky direct criticism of Iran's 83-year-old Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who on Monday accused the United States and Israel of plotting the protests that have swept across the nation.
"They have sat down and planned this," Khamenei claimed in his first public comments since the demonstrations began 18 days ago. "Those who take their salaries, some being traitorous Iranians abroad, have helped them."
His words did nothing to quell the calls for freedom spreading from school to school and university to university across Iran. The protests were sparked by the September 16 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran's "morality police." She was accused of wearing an improper hijab, which covers the hair and body, as required under the country's draconian interpretation of Islamic law.
Since Saturday, when the academic year officially began in Iran, college students have been protesting daily, shouting slogans such as "The mullahs must get lost!" and "Iran is drowning in blood, our professors are drowning in silence."
People under the age of 25, most of them women, have continued to drive the protests despite a harsh crackdown by the regime.
The Oslo-based Iran Human Rights group says at least 133 people across Iran have been killed by the authorities since the protests began. That figure includes more than 40 people reportedly killed in the southeast city of Zahedan last Friday. Thousands more have been arrested, according to activists.
"Everyone is out on the streets," one college student said in a video message. "We have to keep going. They can't arrest all of us."
On Sunday, security forces besieged Tehran's prestigious Sharif University of Technology — often referred to as the MIT of Iran — where students had been protesting peacefully. The student union said armed plainclothes agents beat demonstrators with batons, fired at them with plastic bullets and shotguns at short range, chased students down into a parking garage, and brutally arrested hundreds of them — though many were later released.
"The ground was full of blood," one woman said on condition of anonymity, adding that the authorities started scrubbing it clean the next day. "Nobody was chanting anything bad. We just want freedom. Why do I have to be afraid? We are human beings. We want to live like the rest of the world."
The Iranian authorities "think that by using force, brutal force, they can be in power forever," Maziar Bahari, the London-based editor of IranWire news, told CBS News. "But of course, they're wrong."
Bahari said Iran's younger generations have simply had enough.
"My generation and the generation after me, we gave the government the chance to reform itself," said Bahari, who was jailed in Iran in 2009 while living and working there as a journalist for Newsweek. "But this generation can see that… the Islamic Republic cannot be reformed, so this government has to be ended."
Modern Iran emerged with the overthrow of a secular government in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Now, 43 years later, many young Iranians in the Islamic Republic are fed up with what they see as repressive rules, global isolation and severe Western sanctions imposed on their country.
"Young people are becoming poorer," Bahari said. "They are being humiliated at school. They're being humiliated on the streets by the morality police… their country is being humiliated by the world because of their kind of government. So, imagine living in that country. You want change. You want the change today."
Iran's Gen Z — those born between the late 1990s and early 2010s — are also the first generation to have grown up immersed in social media and the Internet, much like their counterparts in the West, explains Holly Dagres, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
"While it is heavily censored and has to be accessed through circumvention tools, Iranian Gen Z can see, in real-time, how the rest of the world lives," Dagres told CBS News. "Iranian youth look inwards and see how isolated their country is and that a corrupt and hypocritical clerical establishment rules it. Naturally, they want more - things we take for granted in the West."
Dagres said the violent tactics Iranian authorities used against students at Sharif University on Sunday were symbolic, because the university is known for having the best and the brightest, many of whom end up living and working in the West.
"Viral videos of the crackdown on the country's brilliant minds signals to youth everywhere two choices: Take down the Islamic Republic, or leave Iran," said Dagres.
On Tuesday, President Ebrahim Raisi called for national unity and acknowledged that Iran had "weaknesses or shortcomings."
But Omid Memarian, senior Iran analyst at the Democracy for the Arab World Now group, said the president's remarks only further highlighted the regime's disconnect from reality.
"Protesters are chanting, 'Down with the dictator…' and he is talking about national unity," Memarian told CBS News. "It's obvious the authorities have not understood that the anger and dissatisfaction are much bigger than the recent death of Mahsa Amini."
Iran has had many other Mahsas - women who have been killed - whose stories were never told, said the college student.
"Our problem is not with Islam or religion," she said. "We just want… people to live as they like in Iran and not be jailed for it."
"Please hear our voices," she added. "Help us in any way you can."
World - Latest - Google News
October 04, 2022 at 11:16PM
https://ift.tt/JWBwQ8S
"They can't arrest all of us": Why Iran's defiant young protesters "want the change today" - CBS News
World - Latest - Google News
https://ift.tt/cOy6dWB
Japan issues rare alert as North Korea fires missile without warning over island - CNN
Japan urged residents to take shelter early Tuesday morning after North Korea fired a ballistic missile without warning over the country for the first time in five years, in a major and potentially dangerous escalation of recent weapons tests by the Kim Jong Un regime.
The launch, which prompted immediate backlash from Tokyo and Seoul, comes amid a spate of missile tests, with five launches in the past 10 days, and follows renewed military drills between the United States and its regional allies.
The intermediate-range missile was launched from Mupyong-ri near North Korea’s central border with China at around 7:23 a.m. local time, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). It flew about 4,600 kilometers (2,858 miles) for 20 minutes at an estimated maximum altitude of 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) over Japan’s Tohoku region on the main island of Honshu before falling into the Pacific Ocean, some 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) from the country’s shore, Japanese officials said.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida strongly condemned the launch and called North Korea’s recent ballistic missile launches “outrageous” in comments to reporters at his official residence.
Tuesday’s launch is the country’s 23rd such missile test this year, including both ballistic and cruise missiles.
There were no reports of damage to aircraft or vessels near the missile trajectory, according to Japanese authorities, but the unannounced missile triggered a rare J-alert, a system designed to inform the public of emergencies and threats in Japan.
In such emergencies, alerts are sent out via sirens, through community radio stations and to individual smartphone users. On Tuesday, alerts were sent out at around 7:30 a.m. local time to people in Aomori prefecture, Hokkaido and Tokyo’s Izu and Ogasawara islands, according to Japanese officials.
A tweet posted by Japan’s Prime Minister’s office urged residents to take shelter in buildings and to “not approach anything suspicious that is found and to immediately contact the police or fire department.”
South Korea, US condemn missile launch
Other governments were quick to decry the launch, with South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol branding it a “reckless” provocation, adding that North Korea will face a decisive response from the South Korean military and its allies.
The White House also “strongly condemned” the test, with National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson calling it a “destabilizing” action that shows North Korea’s “blatant disregard for United Nations Security Council resolutions and international safety norms.”
Kim Seung-kyum, chief of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and Paul LaCamera, the United States Forces Korea commander, held a meeting after the launch and reaffirmed the combined defense posture will be further strengthened against any threats and provocations from North Korea, the JCS said.
The US Indo-Pacific Command also released a statement saying American commitments to the defense of Japan and South Korea “remain ironclad.”
Ankit Panda, a senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said regular missile testing was was part of North Korea’s plan to maintain its nuclear forces.
“It is quite possible that the United States, South Korea and Japan will take away a message from this missile test that North Korea is continuing to assert itself to show that it has the ability to deliver nuclear weapons to targets including the US territory of Guam,” he said, adding that “risk reduction” to stop a crisis from escalating should be the current priority.
“If such a crisis were to play out, it would play out under a significantly more advanced North Korean nuclear capability, which I think would significantly limit the options that the United States and South Korea would have, potentially to retaliate or manage escalation with North Korea,” he said.
North Korea’s potential nuclear plans
Tuesday’s launch could herald an intensification of provocations by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, experts told CNN.
“Pyongyang is still in the middle of a provocation and testing cycle and is likely waiting until after China’s mid-October Communist Party Congress to conduct an even more significant test,” said Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.
“The Kim regime is developing weapons such as tactical nuclear warheads and submarine-launched ballistic missiles as part of a long-term strategy to outrun South Korea in an arms race and drive wedges among US allies.”
Four previous missile launches occurred in the space of a week in late September and early October, around the same time US Vice President Kamala Harris made an official visit to Japan and South Korea, and as US, Japanese and South Korean navies held joint exercises.
North Korea’s tests also come as international attention remains firmly focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and as both Moscow and Beijing appear reluctant to side with the West to further censure Pyongyang.
In May, Russia and China vetoed a US-drafted United Nations Security Council resolution to strengthen sanctions on North Korea for its weapons testing, in a vote the US said was likely to fuel Pyongyang’s program to develop nuclear-capable missile systems.
Washington and the International Atomic Energy Agency have both warned this year that North Korea may be preparing for a nuclear test, which would be its first since 2017.
Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute, drew a connection between the missile tests and a potential nuclear test.
“North Korea is going to keep conducting missile tests until the current round of modernization is done. I don’t think a nuclear (test) explosion is far behind,” he told CNN.
CNN’s Jake Kwon and Eric Cheung contributed to this report.
World - Latest - Google News
October 04, 2022 at 01:35PM
https://ift.tt/f0Lce1J
Japan issues rare alert as North Korea fires missile without warning over island - CNN
World - Latest - Google News
https://ift.tt/kzgDSfa
Sunday, October 2, 2022
Latvia to remain Russia's critic as prime minister wins election - Reuters
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/FSPW75MBF5MCXGOZI5E4337TRY.jpg)
RIGA, Oct 2 (Reuters) - The centre-right New Unity party of Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins won Saturday's election, according to provisional results, with its 19% of the vote putting him in a position to head another coalition government.
The results - with 96% of districts counted - mean Latvia should remain a leading voice alongside its Baltic neighbours Lithuania and Estonia in pushing the European Union for a decisive stance against Russia.
Karins' party was again the party with the most support following the election. Members of the current coalition were on track to receive 42 seats in the 100-seat parliament, so Karins needs to draft additional allies to stay as a prime minister.
As many as nine parties could win sufficient votes to secure seats in parliament.
After a campaign dominated by security concerns following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Karins told Reuters he will be working to craft a coalition of like-minded parties.
"I am convinced that we will be able find such a solution," he said early on Sunday.
"First and foremost on everyone's minds is how we all get through the winter, not only in Latvia but throughout the EU, and that we all remain united behind Ukraine, and do not waiver in the face of difficulties for us."
The first Latvian head of government to serve through a full four-year term, Karins, a 57-year-old dual U.S. and Latvian citizen, has benefited from his Moscow policy, which included restricting the entry of Russian citizens travelling from Russia and Belarus.
"I see no chance that any government in Latvia will stop supporting Ukraine - this is not a view of a small group of politicians, this is the view of our society," said Karins.
But his victory could widen a rift between the country's Latvian majority and its Russian-speaking minority over their place in society.
FALLING SUPPORT FOR RUSSIA-LEANING PARTIES
The election results show falling support for parties popular with Latvia's Russian-speaking minority, which make up about a quarter of the country's population of 1.9 million.
The left-leaning Harmony party saw its support drop to 5% after securing the largest share of the vote in the 2018 election, with observers pointing to ethnic Latvian voters turning away and disappointment among Russian speakers over the party leadership's criticism of the Kremlin over Ukraine.
"The Russian voters are migrating across the national line and they are voting for Latvian (parties). This is positive", said Filips Rajevskis, an analyst.
The opposition Greens and Farmers Union, a coalition of conservative groups closely knit around Aivars Lembergs, the long-term mayor of Ventspils who was put on a U.S. sanctions list for alleged corruption in 2019, was in second place with 13%.
On 100,000 euros bail since February while he appeals a 2021 corruption conviction, 69-year-old Lembergs said in 2014 that basing NATO troops in Latvia amounted to an occupation.
However party chairman Armands Krauze told Reuters early on Sunday that his party will support Karins' tough stance against Russia saying "we think our current foreign policy is very right".
Krauze said Lembergs' words were blown out of proportion by opponents.
Reporting by Andrius Sytas and Janis Laizans Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Frances Kerry
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
World - Latest - Google News
October 02, 2022 at 02:55PM
https://ift.tt/Oo5UX6N
Latvia to remain Russia's critic as prime minister wins election - Reuters
World - Latest - Google News
https://ift.tt/TFbBjHS
Dozens killed in stampede, riot at Indonesia football match - Al Jazeera English
At least 174 people have been killed and dozens more injured in a riot and a stampede at an Indonesian football stadium.
The tragedy on Saturday night in the eastern city of Malang was one of the world’s deadliest sporting stadium disasters.
Police in East Java province said thousands of fans of Arema FC stormed the pitch at Kanjuruhan Stadium after their team lost 3-2 to Persebaya Surabaya. Officers tried to control the “riots” by firing tear gas, triggering a stampede as panicked fans rushed to an exit gate.
Some suffocated in the chaos while others were trampled to death. At least 34 people, including two police officers, died at the stadium.
East Java’s Vice Governor Emil Dardak told Kompas TV in an interview on Sunday afternoon that the death toll has climbed to 174, while more than 100 injured people were receiving intensive treatment in eight hospitals. Eleven of them were in critical condition, he said.
“At 9:30am (0230 GMT) the death toll was 158, at 10:30am the figure rose to 174 deaths,” Dardak said.
A hospital director told local television that one of the victims was five years old.
Video footage from local news channels showed fans streaming onto the pitch in the Kanjurujan Stadium in Malang after Arema FC lost to Persebaya Surabaya. Scuffles can be seen, with what appeared to be tear gas in the air. Images also showed people who appeared to have lost consciousness being carried away by other fans.
The stadium holds 42,000 people and authorities said it was a sell-out. Police said about 3,000 people had stormed the pitch. Vehicles outside the stadium were also torched, including at least five police vehicles.
Survivors described panicking spectators in a packed crowd as tear gas rained down on them.
“Officers fired tear gas, and automatically people were rushing to come out, pushing each other and it caused many victims,” a 43-year-old spectator told the AFP news agency. “Nothing was happening, there was no riot. I don’t know what the issue was, they suddenly fired tear gas. That’s what shocked me, didn’t they think about kids, women?”
League suspended
President Joko Widodo ordered an investigation into the tragedy, a safety review into all football matches and directed the country’s football association to suspend all matches until “security improvements” were completed.
“I deeply regret this tragedy and I hope this football tragedy will be the last in our country,” Widodo said.
Fan violence is an enduring problem in Indonesia, with a strong rivalry between clubs sometimes leading to violence among supporters. Arema FC and Persebaya Surabaya are longtime rivals and the latter’s fans were not allowed to buy tickets for Saturday’s game due to fears of violence.
Indonesia’s coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs, Mahfud MD, said organisers had ignored authorities’ recommendation to hold the match in the afternoon instead of the evening. He also said the government had recommended only 38,000 tickets be printed, but there was instead a sell-out crowd of 42,000. “The government has made improvements to the implementation of football matches… and will continue to improve. But this sport, which is a favourite of the wider community, often provokes supporters to express emotions suddenly,” he said in an Instagram post.
World soccer’s governing body FIFA specifies in its safety regulations that no firearms or “crowd control gas” should be carried or used by stewards or police. East Java police did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether they were aware of such regulations.
Referring to the FIFA rules, Amnesty International criticised the use of tear gas in the stadium and urged authorities to “conduct a swift, thorough, and independent investigation” and “ensure that those who are found to have committed violations are tried in open court and do not merely receive internal or administrative sanctions”.
“This loss of life cannot go unanswered,” said Usman Hamid, the executive director of Amnesty International Indonesia.
The Football Association of Indonesia (PSSI) said it would send its own investigation team to Malang to establish the cause of the crush. It also banned Arema FC from hosting home games for the rest of the season.
“We’re sorry and apologise to families of the victims and all parties over the incident,” PSSI Chairman Mochamad Iriawan said.
The tragedy comes as Indonesia is scheduled to host the FIFA U-20 World Cup in May and June next year. They are also one of three countries bidding to stage next year’s Asian Cup, the continent’s equivalent of the Euros, after China pulled out as host.
Al Jazeera’s Jessica Washington, reporting from the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, said Saturday’s disaster was “historic”.
“Violence and riots are a common occurrence at football matches in Indonesia, but we have never seen something like this before,” she said.
“This is a historic tragedy, not only for football in Indonesia but football internationally. This is one of the biggest tragedies the sport has seen, in terms of fan violence, in terms of deaths of fans at a match,” she added.
Other stadium disasters include a 1964 crush at a Peru-Argentina Olympic qualifier at Lima’s National Stadium that killed some 320 people, and the 2012 Port Said stadium tragedy in Egypt where 74 people died in clashes.
In 1989, some 96 Liverpool supporters were crushed to death in the United Kingdom, when an overcrowded and fenced-in enclosure collapsed at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield.
World - Latest - Google News
October 02, 2022 at 01:22PM
https://ift.tt/FwEjGba
Dozens killed in stampede, riot at Indonesia football match - Al Jazeera English
World - Latest - Google News
https://ift.tt/TFbBjHS
Saturday, October 1, 2022
Latvia goes to polls amid growing rift between Latvian majority and Russian minority - Yahoo News
VILNIUS, October 1 (Reuters) - Latvians will vote in parliamentary elections on Saturday, with polls predicting that Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins's centre-right New Unity party will win the most votes, enabling him to continue his coalition with the conservative National Alliance.
A victory for Karins could widen a growing rift between the Latvian majority and Latvia's Russian-speaking minority over their place in society.
The first Latvian head of government to survive a full four-year term, Karins is benefitting from driving the country's hawkish stance against Russia, its amid widespread national anger over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
The election campaign has been dominated by questions of national identity and security concerns, while urgent issues including soaring energy costs and high inflation were largely pushed aside.
Karins told Reuters on Tuesday he believes the war in Ukraine has consolidated his NATO and European Union nation of 1.9 million, and said that if re-elected, he would integrate the Russian minority - a quarter of population - by having the country educate its children in the Latvian language.
"We're putting all of our focus on the youth, to make sure that regardless of what language is spoken at home, that the child grows up with all of the advantages of knowing our language, knowing our culture", he said.
Before Moscow invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 in what it terms a "special military operation", tens of thousands of Russian speakers in Latvia used to gather every May 9 around a monument in Riga to commemorate the Soviet victory in World War Two.
Their gatherings were banned after the invasion and the 84-metre structure in the centre of the capital was crushed with a bulldozer on orders from the government - which is dominated by ethnic Latvians and would prefer to bury the memories of being part of the former Soviet Union up to 1991.
Popular TV broadcasts from Russia have been banned and the state language board has proposed renaming a central Riga street commemorating Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. Karins’ government has put forward plans to switch all education to Latvian and to swiftly phase out instruction in Russian.
The social democrat Harmony party, traditionally backed by Latvia's Russian-speaking minority, received 19.8% of votes in the 2018 elections and became the largest opposition party in parliament. However, the latest survey indicates 7.3% support for Harmony.
(Reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
World - Latest - Google News
October 01, 2022 at 07:08AM
https://ift.tt/YMGgS7p
Latvia goes to polls amid growing rift between Latvian majority and Russian minority - Yahoo News
World - Latest - Google News
https://ift.tt/L64sKva
Featured Post
Qatar 'appalled' by reported criticism from Israel's Netanyahu - BBC.com
By David Gritten BBC News Reuters Qatar's foreign ministry said the Israeli prime minister's reported remarks were ...
Popular Posts
-
DENVER — Even if he isn’t lighting the baseball world on fire as he did two years ago, Pete Alonso reminded everyone Monday night that he re...
-
Rep. Liz Cheney Elizabeth (Liz) Lynn Cheney Trump says he believes Scarborough 'got away with murder' Hillicon Valley: House FISA b...
-
Military & Defense Iran ups the ante against US, proxies strike Iraq military base with ballistic missiles Rebecca Rommen 2024...
