Category: World

Senegal votes in delayed presidential election | Elections News

Voting is under way in Senegal in a delayed presidential election that many hope will bring change after a turbulent political period that has triggered violent anti-government protests and boosted support for the opposition.

More than seven million of the country’s over 17 million people are registered to vote in the election, which has seen about 16,440 polling stations open on Sunday across the country and in the diaspora.

Nineteen contenders are vying to replace President Macky Sall, stepping down after a second term marred by unrest over the prosecution of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko and concerns that Sall wanted to extend his mandate past the constitutional limit.

The incumbent is not on the ballot for the first time in Senegal’s history. His ruling coalition has picked former prime minister Amadou Ba, 62, as its candidate.

Sonko, Sall’s main opponent, was not able to take part after he was convicted of defamation. Bassirou Diomaye Faye replaced Sonko as the candidate for the PASTEF party.

Besides Ba and Faye, Dakar’s former Mayor Khalifa Sall, veteran politician Idrissa Seck, former Prime Minister Mahammed Boun Abdallah Dionne, a close ally of President Sall Aly Ngouille Ndiaye and entrepreneur and political newcomer Anta Babacar Ngom — the sole woman among the candidates — are all a part of the presidential race.

(Al Jazeera)

To avoid a run-off election, one candidate must secure more than 50 percent of the vote. While official results are expected next week, in previous elections candidates have announced their predictions on the same evening as the vote.

Reporting from Dakar, Al Jazeera’s Nicolas Haque said it was an “unusual” election.

“There is both anticipation like you would have in any election; there is an element of fear and unknown because this is the first election in the last 12 years where President Macky Sall is not in the running … and there is an element of excitement, especially among those young, first-time voters.

“This is an election like no other and it’s very important, especially for young people.”

‘Voting for change’

Lines formed outside polling stations around Dakar on Sunday. Roads were quiet as the nation’s elite police force was deployed across the city in armoured vehicles, checking voters’ cards.

“I am so happy to be able to exercise my right to vote as a Senegalese citizen,” voter Thiaba Camara Sy, from the organisation Demain Senegal (Tomorrow Senegal), told Al Jazeera at a polling station in Dakar.

“This is something that we have won because the risk was high of the election being delayed until who knows when, so I’ve been queuing for two hours but I’m happy.”

In the ocean-facing neighbourhood of Dakar’s Ngor, fisherman Alioune Samba, 66, said he was voting for the change everyone wants.

“Food, water, school; everything is expensive with the low income we have in Senegal,” the father of three told Reuters news agency.

People wait to cast their votes outside a polling station during the presidential elections, in Dakar, Senegal, Sunday, March 24
People wait to cast their votes outside a polling station during the presidential elections, in Dakar, Senegal [Mosa’ab Elshamy/AP]

Khodia Ndiayes, a 52-year-old cook, told the Associated Press news agency she picked Faye on the ballot because she wanted Sonko to win.

“I’m proud to have voted,” she said. “We need a new president because life is expensive, the economy is bad and we need better schools.”

Al Jazeera’s Haque said it appeared that a lot of people have come out to vote.

“It’s interesting who those people are: a lot of young men but also women, key in this election because women make up a substantial part of the electorate in Senegal,” he said.

Faye versus Ba

Faye, who was endorsed by the more popular Sonko to replace him, was detained almost a year ago on charges including defamation and contempt of court.

An amnesty law passed this month allowed his release days before the vote. He and his colleague Diomaye have campaigned together under the banner “Diomaye is Sonko”.

“The population is choosing between continuation and rupture,” Faye said after casting his vote, urging contenders to accept the result.

Meanwhile, Ba said that he was “very, very, very confident” of his chances of winning.

In these elections, “the two political camps stand on opposite sides of the political spectrum”, Mucahid Durmaz, a senior political risk analyst for West Africa at Verisk Maplecroft, told Al Jazeera.

He noted that while outgoing President Sall and his ruling coalition candidate Ba favour economic liberalisation policies, opposition figure Sonko and his chosen candidate Faye plan to introduce a new currency and renegotiate contracts with oil and gas operators in the country.

“The issue here is that despite the economic boom that the country has witnessed over the years under President Sall, it’s not really facilitated a wider socioeconomic development for the country’s youthful population,” Durmaz said.

Economic issues

Unemployment is another key issue in the election.

Frustration at the lack of job opportunities has spurred support for Sonko and his backed candidate Faye, particularly among the youth.

The share of young Senegalese not in employment, education or training stood at 35 percent in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic further squeezed the job market.

Besides unemployment, the rising cost of living spurred by Russia’s war in Ukraine and the appreciation of the United States dollar have undermined support for current ruling Senegalese authorities.

The launch of oil and gas production later in 2024 has also raised questions about whether the natural resource wealth will benefit the wider population and create jobs.

The Sonko-backed opposition coalition has promised to renegotiate energy contracts to maximise revenues, while Ba is running on the slogan “Prosperity Shared”.

‘Calm’ voting process

While the elections come amid frustrations over a fragile economy, according to election observers, the voting process has been relatively peaceful.

Hundreds of election observers from civil society, the African Union, the regional group the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the European Union were on the ground monitoring the fairness of the vote.

“From the opening this morning, our observers – and it’s a partial piece of the picture – we have seen that there are quite some queues in front of the offices, which shows that people are mobilised to go and use their right to vote and express their views for the future of Senegal,” Malin Bjork, from the EU election observer mission to Senegal, told Al Jazeera.

“Election offices are functioning well. It’s calm; there is serenity in the process, according to our observations,” she added.

“I think today is a very great day for us,” the Aar Sunu Election (Protect Our Election) group, led by Dr Abdoulaye Bousso, told Al Jazeera in Dakar.

When Sall announced the cancellation of the election in February, there was an uproar from civil society in the country, including Bousso’s group.

“We fought to have this election day happen and we are very proud to see the big mobilisation of the Senegalese people.

“For us, it’s the victory of the Senegalese democracy.”

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Fastest waiters in Paris compete in ‘coffee run’ street race | Arts and Culture

Paris, France – One of Paris’s most fashionable districts was flooded with white-shirted waiters balancing trays of coffee and croissants as the iconic Course des Cafes (“coffee race”) returned to the French capital on Sunday.

The competition, which began in Paris 110 years ago, sees waiters race each other while holding trays of typical French fare.

The event had not been held since 2011 because of budget issues. But with the Olympics coming to town this year, the city of Paris decided to revive the tradition to contribute to the spirit of athletic competition.

“Slaloming between tables and serving orders in record time without spilling one’s plate – that’s a sport,” the city said in a statement.

Thousands of people gathered to watch around 200 waiters take part in the race, which traverses a 2km (1.2-mile) route around Le Marais in central Paris. Without running, each waiter had to reach the finish line while balancing a tray with a glass of water, a cup of coffee and a croissant – and without spilling anything.

Competitors were required to wear a white top, black trousers and a waiter’s apron, the traditional garb for Parisian waiters. The dress code was meant to “pay homage to this legendary historic race”, said Paris Deputy Mayor Dan Lert.

Lert is also president of Eau de Paris. The public service company sponsored the race as part of a public relations campaign to encourage people to drink more tap water and consume fewer single-use plastic water bottles.

The race starts and finishes at the Paris City Hall, an imposing Renaissance Revival building in the 4th arrondissement, close to the River Seine. Competitors must weave their way through some of the narrower streets of Le Marais district, one of the only parts of the city where the cramped alleys common to medieval Paris remain intact.

Racing waiters also have to contend with hordes of tourists coming to explore the Marais, a popular spot for visitors thanks to its elegant 17th-century mansions, the Picasso Museum and writer Victor Hugo’s house.

The district is also known for its boutique shops and, due to its roots as the Jewish Quarter following the French Revolution, home to a couple of famous falafel shops as well.

The race’s female and male winners, ⁠Pauline Van Wymeersch and ⁠Samy Lamrous, were each given tickets to the opening ceremony of the Olympics this summer. Other top finishers received gift cards to restaurants around the city.

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The Max Planck Society must end its unconditional support for Israel | Israel War on Gaza

We, a diverse group of employees at the Max Planck Society (MPS), Germany’s top research institution, are writing this letter to express our disapproval of the position our employer has taken on Israel-Palestine and call for a serious change in discourse, both within the MPS and in Germany as a whole, about Israel-Palestine.

On October 11, MPS published a “statement on the terror attacks against Israel”, which began with a condemnation of “the horrific attacks by Hamas against Israel in the strongest possible terms”.

It went on to express solidarity with Israel, grief for Israeli and other lives lost, and sympathy for affected families, friends, and loved ones. It lamented that students, young academics, and other employees of universities and research institutions would be “called up as reservists” and reaffirmed a commitment to maintaining “close scientific and personal ties” with research institutions in Israel, and using those connections to “extend support wherever possible”.

The only sentence that mentioned Palestinians was one that ascribed responsibility for their “unspeakable suffering” not to Israel or the Israeli army, but to Hamas.

The statement did not sit well with numerous employees of the MPS, nor have subsequent statements and actions of the MPS in the past six months.

In November, MPS President Patrick Cramer went on a visit to Israel and the Weizmann Institute of Science and expressed his support for Israeli researchers, but voiced no criticism of the actions of the Israeli army in Gaza. In December, the MPS announced it was allocating one million euros ($1.1m) for German-Israeli research collaboration. The programme seeks “to help stabilise Israel’s world-leading scientific community during the current crisis”.

The way the programme was framed to the public reflects the MPS leadership’s perception that there is only one victim that needs to be supported – the Israeli research community, which allegedly suffers severely as a consequence “of the Hamas attack on Israel” – meaning only the Israeli research community suffers from the relentless war carried out by Israel against Gaza. Why German taxpayers’ money should be spent to stabilise a research community impacted by the actions of its own government remains inexplicable to us.

On the other hand, not a single euro, or indeed word, has been spent on offering any kind of help to the scientific communities in Gaza and the West Bank, which are the primary victims of Israel’s war and policies of violent occupation. According to a statement issued by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, “the Israeli army has killed 94 university professors, along with hundreds of teachers and thousands of students, as part of its genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”.

In February, an article appeared in the German newspaper Die Welt, attacking eminent Lebanese-Australian scholar Ghassan Hage, employed at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, which is part of the MPS. Within a few days, the MPS announced it was firing him for “expressing views that are incompatible with the core values of the Max Planck Society”. Hage had been critical of Israel in his online posts.

An open letter from Max Planck researchers was circulated in protest of Hage’s dismissal, appealing for the reversal of this decision. We support the letter and also stand behind an earlier statement by colleagues published on December 17, criticising the MPS’s stance on Israel-Palestine and asking it to reconsider its position of unconditional support of Israel and its academic institutions in their entirety.

The events of the last months have fully confirmed that such a reconsideration is absolutely necessary. In particular, as members of the MPS, we should not support indiscriminate killings of civilians, massive destruction of civilian infrastructure, and a nearly comprehensive denial of humanitarian conditions for Palestinians in Gaza.

In its declaration of January 26, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) placed Israel under the obligation to undertake all possible measures to protect civilian life in Gaza, to guarantee the provision of basic services and adequate humanitarian aid, and to take all measures to prevent incitement to and acts of genocide. None of this has happened until now. On the contrary, Israel continues its inhumane campaign of annihilation in Gaza without shame.

The participation in the Holocaust of scientists from the MPS’s predecessor, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, obliges us to stand together against all crimes against humanity and the possibility of genocide: “Never again” must be “Never again now”. As inheritors of this legacy, we have four clear demands for a rapid change in the MPS’s position on Israel-Palestine:

To uphold the ICJ´s stipulation to do everything to protect civilians in Gaza, we demand that the MPS call for a complete, unconditional, and immediate ceasefire.

We demand that the MPS take a clear public stance against the long-standing Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and its violence against the Palestinian people.

We demand that the MPS allocate the same amount dedicated to the Israel Programme, to the reconstruction of scientific institutions in Gaza. This is even more important since all universities in Gaza have now been completely destroyed.

Finally, we demand a public declaration by the MPS as to whether – and if so, in what manner – it has been and continues to be involved in dual-use research, meaning research that can be used for peaceful as well as military purposes, with its academic partners in Israel.

Any continuation of the one-sided and unconditional support of Israeli academic institutions by the MPS threatens to make the MPS and all its members complicit in the crimes committed by Israel in Gaza. We categorically reject this.

In addition to these immediate issues of morality, law, and justice, we, as scholars of the MPS, want to raise some pertinent and long-overdue questions of political and academic relevance:

What are the effects of excluding Palestinians from the MPS’s articulation of its historical relationship with the State of Israel?

How has collaborating with scientists in Israel but not in Palestine shaped the content and contours of the scientific knowledge produced?

How is this collaboration entangled in the formation of structural violence toward Palestinians, whether within Israel, in Gaza, or in the West Bank and East Jerusalem?

In an environment of public censorship and vilification of dissenting voices on this issue in Germany – which motivated us not to sign this letter with our individual names – does the MPS not feel an obligation to foster and actively call for an open and critical dialogue on Palestine-Israel, within the organisation and, more importantly, in the wider German public sphere?

How can we, a large group of internationally diverse researchers living in Germany, help to build bridges, not only between Germany and the State of Israel, but with Palestine too, and in so doing nurture a more peaceful and just future?

These and other questions urgently need to be discussed objectively and critically both within the MPS and the entire academic community in Germany and across the world if further horrific outbreaks of violence, and our complicity in them, are to be prevented in the future.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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Ukraine says it hit two Russian landing ships off occupied Crimea | Russia-Ukraine war News

The Ukrainian military has said it hit two large Russian landing ships in overnight attacks on the occupied Crimean peninsula as well as other infrastructure used by the Russian navy in the Black Sea.

“The defence forces of Ukraine successfully hit the Azov and Yamal large landing ships, a communications centre and also several infrastructure facilities of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in temporarily occupied Crimea,” Ukraine’s military said on Sunday.

The military’s statement did not say how it hit the targets, but a Moscow-installed official in the region reported a major Ukrainian air attack, and said air defences had shot down more than 10 missiles over the Crimean port of Sevastopol.

“It was the most massive attack in recent times,” the Russian-appointed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said in a Telegram post.

He said that a 65-year-old man was killed and four people were injured and that transport infrastructure including passenger boats and buses were partially damaged, with windows broken on five boats.

Three passenger buses, 13 school buses and one trolley bus were among the vehicles damaged, he added.

Footage shared on social media showed a large blast in the city sending a fireball and plume of black smoke into the air, as well as what appeared to be Russian air defences intercepting incoming projectiles.

Ukraine has claimed to have destroyed around a third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, usually in attacks at night using sea-based drones packed with explosives.

Satellite images show Russia has moved much of the fleet further east, to the port of Novorossiysk, amid the spate of attacks.

Patrick Bury, defence and security analyst at the University of Bath, said the attack would not have a strategic impact on the war.

“Up until a few weeks ago, this would have been really important because the Russians were using those landing crafts to resupply troops down south. But it looks like they have now engineered a railway line, so it won’t have a strategic impact,” Bury told Al Jazeera.

“But by pushing the Black Sea Fleet back further east and out of the Black Sea essentially, it is allowing Ukraine to get more grains exports out which is important to the war economy,” he added.

Increased frequency of Russian attacks

Russia has significantly escalated its air attacks against Ukraine in recent days, in what it says is retaliation for a wave of Ukrainian strikes on its border regions.

In the early hours of Friday, Moscow launched its largest aerial barrages against Ukraine’s energy sector since the start of the war.

Moscow has also resumed targeting the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. On Sunday, Kyiv and the western region of Lviv came under a “massive” Russian air attack, according to Ukrainian officials. They said that while there were no casualties, Russia had fired 29 cruise missiles and 28 drones at its territory overnight.

Russian forces are also seeking to press their advantage in manpower and ammunition as Kyiv faces delays in supplies of additional Western aid.

On Saturday, Moscow claimed to have seized a village on the western outskirts of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.

Its capture last month of Adviivka, near the Russian-held stronghold of Donetsk, was the first major territorial gain made by Russia since the devastated city of Bakhmut was seized 10 months ago.

Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed that success as a sign that Russian forces were back on the offensive.

“[Ukraine’s President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy himself said that Russia has won the winter, and I think the momentum has shifted to the Russian forces on the ground at least. Adviivka is proof of that,” Bury said.

“The big question now is whether there is something brewing in probably the month of May once the mud starts to dry in that area of Ukraine. So we will have to wait and see,” he said, adding that the Russians will be doing their absolute best to camouflage any kind of troop build-up if a spring offensive is on the cards.

Russian missile breaches Polish airspace

Meanwhile, Poland’s army said that one of the Russian missiles fired at western Ukraine had entered its airspace.

“Polish airspace was breached by one of the cruise missiles fired in the night by the air forces… of the Russian Federation,” the army posted on X.

“The object flew through Polish airspace above the village of Oserdow [in Lublin province] and stayed for 39 seconds,” it said.

Poland, which has been a staunch ally of its neighbour Ukraine in the two years since the invasion, said on Sunday that it would demand an explanation from Moscow.

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Bodies of three Rohingya found as Indonesia ends rescue for capsized boat | Rohingya News

Local authorities in Aceh province have received several reports about dead bodies floating in nearby waters since Saturday.

The bodies of three Rohingya refugees have been found in open waters off Indonesia’s Aceh province, says the provincial search-and-rescue agency as authorities end a search for survivors from a capsized boat.

The wooden boat with an estimated 151 people on board capsized some 19km (12 miles) from the beach of Kuala Bubon on the west coast of Aceh on Wednesday morning. Fishers and a search-and-rescue team rescued 75 people from the boat by Thursday – 44 men, 22 women and nine children – after they huddled on its overturned hull throughout the night.

However, more than 70 Rohingya were “presumed dead or missing”, which if confirmed would be the biggest loss of life in such an incident so far this year, the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday.

“After we searched the area, the team found three bodies, two adult women and one boy. They are allegedly Rohingya refugees who were the passengers of the capsized and sunken boat,” Al Hussain, chief of Banda Aceh Search and Rescue Agency, said in a statement on Sunday.

Fishers first spotted the three bodies and reported them to local authorities on Saturday. The bodies were taken to the hospital in Calang city in Aceh Jaya district before local authorities buried them.

Officials of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said survivors had confirmed the deceased refugees were on the capsized boat.

“We have verified … we [took] one of the refugees to identify and verify that they were together on the boat,” Faisal Rahman of UNHCR in Aceh said on Saturday.

Local authorities in Aceh have received several reports about dead bodies floating in nearby waters since Saturday. Most of those presumed to have died – mainly women and children – were likely unable to swim, and were carried out to sea by the currents.

The predominately Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar faces widespread discrimination, and most are denied citizenship. About one million of them fled to Bangladesh – including about 740,000 in 2017 – as refugees to escape a brutal campaign by Myanmar’s security forces, who were accused of committing mass rapes and killings and burning thousands of homes.

In recent years, many Rohingya have been fleeing overcrowded camps in Bangladesh to embark on dangerous sea journeys on rickety boats to reach Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia in search of a better future. Many have drowned on the way. The 2023 toll of at least 569 Rohingya dead or missing while trying to flee Myanmar or Bangladesh was the highest since 2014, the UNHCR said in January.

Indonesia, like Thailand and Malaysia, is not a signatory to the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention, and so is not obligated to accept them. However, it generally provides temporary shelter to refugees in distress. More than 2,300 Rohingya arrived in Indonesia last year, UNHCR data showed, surpassing the number of arrivals in the previous four years combined.

However, resistance to the Rohingya has grown in Indonesia, where some allege, without evidence, that the refugees receive more resources from aid agencies than residents and that they engage in criminal activity. Locals have protested for authorities to turn back Rohingya arriving on boats.

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Putin says Moscow concert attackers tried to flee to Ukraine | Russia-Ukraine war

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Russia has detained the four gunmen and other suspects connected to the attack at a Moscow concert hall which killed more than 130 people on Friday. President Vladimir Putin is linking it to Ukraine, despite an ISIL affiliate in Afghanistan claiming responsibility.

Published On 24 Mar 2024

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Russia mourns victims of Moscow concert hall attack, toll likely to rise | ISIL/ISIS News

Russia has lowered flags to half-mast for a day of mourning after scores of people were gunned down with automatic weapons at a rock concert outside Moscow in the deadliest attack inside Russia for two decades.

President Vladimir Putin declared a national day of mourning for Sunday after pledging to track down and punish all those behind the attack, in which 133 people were killed, including three children, and more than 150 injured. The death toll is likely to further rise.

“I express my deep, sincere condolences to all those who lost their loved ones,” Putin said in an address to the nation on Saturday, his first public comments on the attack. “The whole country and our entire people are grieving with you.”

ISIL (ISIS) armed group claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack, but Putin has not publicly mentioned the group in connection with the attackers, whom he said had been trying to escape to Ukraine. He asserted that some on “the Ukrainian side” had prepared to spirit them across the border.

Ukraine has repeatedly denied any role in the attack, which Putin also blamed on “international terrorism”.

People on Sunday laid flowers at Crocus City Hall, the 6,200-seat concert hall outside Moscow where four armed men burst in on Friday just before Soviet-era rock group Picnic was to perform its hit, Afraid of Nothing.

The men fired their automatic weapons in short bursts at terrified civilians who fell screaming in a hail of bullets.

People lay flowers at a makeshift memorial outside the Crocus City Hall concert venue near Moscow [Maxim Shemetov/Reuters]

It was the deadliest attack on Russian territory since the 2004 Beslan school siege, when attackers linked to a Muslim group took more than 1,000 people, including hundreds of children, hostage.

Governor of the Moscow region Andrei Vorobyov said on Sunday the rescue operation was completed and the search operation is still ongoing.

“Identification by relatives is ahead. In hospitals, doctors are fighting for the lives of 107 people,” he said.

Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapavalova, reporting from outside the concert hall, said people have been bringing flowers, candles, stuffed animals and posters for a makeshift memorial outside the hall.

“We can see flags raised to half-staff on the Russian house of parliament and other buildings. People are shocked, they’re grieving… there are numerous memorials throughout Russia,” she said.

“The clearance of the rubble continues with rescue dogs looking for people under the rubble… the death toll could rise.”

Long lines formed in Moscow to donate blood. Blood banks said on Sunday they now had enough blood supplies for four to six months.

Countries worldwide have expressed horror at the attack and sent their condolences to the Russian people.

Following a Palm Sunday Mass at St Peter’s Square in Vatican City, Pope Francis sent prayers to victims of the attack.

“I assure my prayers for the victims of the cowardly terrorist attack carried out the other evening in Moscow,” the 87-year-old pope said.

Headed for Ukraine

Putin said 11 people had been detained, including the four gunmen, who fled the concert hall and made their way to the Bryansk region, about 340km (210 miles) southwest of Moscow.

“They tried to hide and moved towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border,” Putin said.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said the gunmen had contacts in Ukraine and were captured near the border.

Meduza, a Russian publication based in Latvia, confirmed the claims by Russian state officials that the suspects were headed for Ukraine, by geolocating the filming location of the reported arrest of one of the suspects.

According to footage provided by the FSB, officials arrested a 30-year-old near the town of Khatsun in Russia’s Bryansk region, located 14km (8.6 miles) from the Ukrainian border, Meduza reported on Saturday.

The suspects have been brought to Moscow and may appear in court later in the day, according to local news agencies.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was typical of Putin and “other thugs” to seek to divert blame.

ISIL, which once sought control over swaths of Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for the attack, the group’s Amaq agency said on Telegram.

On Saturday night, ISIL released on its Telegram channels what it said was footage of the attack.

In footage published by Russian media and Telegram channels with close ties to the Kremlin, one of the suspects said he was offered money to carry out the attack.

“I shot people,” the suspect, his hands tied and his hair held by an interrogator, a black boot beneath his chin, said in poor and highly accented Russian.

When asked why, he said: “For money.” The man said he had been promised half a million roubles ($5,400).

One was shown answering questions through a Tajik translator.

ISIL behind attack?

The White House said the US government shared information with Russia early this month about a planned attack in Moscow and issued a public advisory to Americans in Russia on March 7. It said ISIL bore sole responsibility for the attack.

“There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever,” US National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday any statement made by US authorities to vindicate Kyiv until the end of the probe into the attack should be considered as evidence.

Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov told the TASS news agency on Saturday the US did not pass any specific information through the Russian embassy in Washington about preparations for the attack.

“Nothing was passed,” the ambassador said. “No concrete information, nothing was transferred to us.”

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Israeli protesters paraglide over PM Netanyahu’s house | Protests

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Israeli protesters have paraglided over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Caesarea with banners suggesting he bears responsibility for the October 7 attack.

Published On 24 Mar 2024

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The Canadian arms embargo on Israel that was not | Israel War on Gaza

Alex Cosh is an editor with the status-quo-allergic independent Canadian news upstart, The Maple.

Cosh is a young reporter with an old-style muckraker’s temperament. His bunkum antennae are tuned to detect and expose the state-sanctioned flimflam that much of Canada’s establishment media hand-deliver like obedient couriers.

So, while the big, corporate mastheads fell promptly and predictably in line behind Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s fulsome support for Israel’s plans to erase Gaza, Cosh has put his experience and dexterous skills to work, revealing Canada’s complicity in that ugly enterprise.

This has translated into a stream of stories detailing how military “aid” flows from Canada to Israel through private companies; what type of military “goods” are exported to Israel, often via the United States; and how Canada’s arms trade with Israel has grown exponentially over the past decade and is now worth tens of millions of dollars per year.

Cosh has also dissected the rhetorical shenanigans of senior government officials meant not only to deflect questions concerning the nature and extent of Canada’s military exports to Israel, but to deny and sow confusion about whether any permits had been approved since early October that may have helped render Gaza a barren, apocalyptic landscape.

Pressed by a coalition of arms-monitoring and peace groups, scores of enlightened Canadians, Cosh and other reporters, Trudeau and company belatedly and grudgingly admitted in late January that Canada had indeed authorised military exports to Israel after October 7.

Official Ottawa tried to blunt the stunning volte-face by suggesting that the permits were limited to “non-lethal equipment” – a meaningless bureaucratic concoction that has no legal and hence binding definition.

In February, Cosh challenged that exculpatory construct. He obtained export data showing that the Trudeau government had approved at least 28.5 million Canadian dollars ($21m) in new permits for military exports to Israel during the opening months of its killing rage in Gaza.

That figure beat the previous record of 26 million Canadian dollars ($19m) worth of weapons and equipment sold in 2021.

Some of the permits allowed for the sale of products from a category that includes “bombs, torpedoes, rockets, other explosive devices and charges and related equipment and accessories”.

By what cockeyed measure do any of those “goods” constitute “non-lethal equipment”?

Cosh’s sleuthing discovered that the permits had been issued quickly, with one processed within four days. The dates on which some of the permits were certified indicate, as well, that Trudeau’s apparatchiks gave the green light to new military exports as late as December 6 after warnings had been issued by genocide scholars and United Nations special rapporteurs that genocide in Gaza was imminent.

But the documents Cosh obtained failed to answer a critical question: How long were the permits valid for? This left open the possibility that some of the “goods” were still being shipped to Israel or will be in the future.

Cosh’s scoop reverberated in the House of Commons, with New Democrats and Green Party members pressing Foreign Minister Melanie Joly for answers about the scope, scale, and timing of Canada’s military exports to Israel.

Then, the leaks began – designed, I suspect, to staunch the disagreeable political fallout and burnish a damaged minister’s doddering image.

The first backroom plant was published on March 14. It quoted anonymous sources who claimed that Joly had stopped approving new permits for exports of “non-lethal” military goods on January 8 because of the “extremely fluid” situation in Gaza.

Describing genocide as an “extremely fluid” situation is an obscene first, even for career bureaucrats expert in nonsensical doublespeak.

On the same day, CBC/Radio-Canada reported that the federal government was “slow-walking” an application to permit a Canadian manufacturer to sell armoured patrol vehicles to Israel.

The implicit message: Joly was on the job.

Members of the pretend socialist party of Canada, the New Democrats, were not convinced. On March 18, they put forward a nonbinding motion in Parliament calling on Canada to “suspend all trade in military goods with Israel”.

Although nonbinding, had the motion been adopted, it would have amounted to a wholesale, two-way arms embargo.

Not surprisingly, that motion was gutted, with Trudeau’s Liberals only agreeing to “cease the further authorisation and transfer of arms exports to Israel”.

The emasculated, nonbinding motion passed with the government’s backing.

Cue the confusion, backlash and hysteria.

Foreign Minister Joly reached back to a 1970s tagline for a Coca-Cola ad and told the Toronto Star that the motion is the “real thing” – whatever that means.

Lackadaisical editors unfamiliar with the motion’s fine print, penned headlines announcing that Canada had imposed an arms embargo on Israel.

A few easily impressed “progressive” US Democrats shouted: Hurray! Meanwhile, a legion of easily upset Israeli politicians and editorial writers dismissed the motion as a performative stunt by a B-movie country with little, if any, influence to deter Israel from pursuing “total victory” in Gaza and beyond – whatever that means.

Oh, wait. The arms embargo might not be an embargo at all.

On March 20, Cosh wrote a long story pointing out that the military export permits authorised before January 8 will be allowed to proceed. The Trudeau government’s existing policy of pausing approvals of new applications for export permits – but not necessarily rejecting them – remains intact.

This was the government’s policy before the New Democrat’s disembowelled motion won the day in Parliament. The rub: Canadian military goods will carry on flowing to Israel.

New Democrats MP Heather McPherson confirmed the thrust of Cosh’s discerning analysis, telling The Maple that existing permits will not be subject to any changes; that could mean military exports worth tens of millions could be delivered to Israel.

To add lunacy to a failed arms “freeze”, Trudeau et al have not ruled out buying Israeli military hardware, including those flagged by human rights groups as being “tested on” Palestinian civilians.

In December, the Canadian military made public its eagerness to spend 43 million Canadian dollars ($31.6m) on an Israeli-made missile the occupation forces have strafed Gaza with yesterday and today.

Canada, the true north strong and free – and still complicit.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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