Relatives of Gaza captives locked themselves in cages and blocked roads in Tel Aviv, calling on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a deal to release their loved ones.
Published On 27 Mar 2024
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Israeli military say its forces are continuing their siege of al-Shifa Hospital where they have claimed to have killed a number of fighters.
Here’s how things stand on Wednesday, March 27, 2024:
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Rights group says President Nayib Bukele has reduced gang violence by replacing it with state violence.
As El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele embarks on his second term in office, an international rights group has warned that his war on gangs has created a spiralling human rights crisis.
As of February 2024, Bukele’s draconian two-year campaign, which has seen the authorities detain about 78,000 people, has caused 235 deaths in state custody, said Amnesty International on Wednesday. Citing a local rights group, it also reported 327 cases of enforced disappearances.
“Reducing gang violence by replacing it with state violence cannot be a success,” said Amnesty’s Americas director Ana Piquer in a statement. The Salvadoran government had adopted “disproportionate measures”, she said, denying, minimising and concealing human rights violations.
Bukele launched his war on gangs in March 2022, slashing homicides to the lowest rate in three decades after imposing a state of emergency that suspended the need for arrest warrants and the right to a fair trial, among other civil liberties. Prison overcrowding currently stands at 148 percent, according to Amnesty.
After Bukele consolidated power in a landslide win in February’s election, the rights group warned the situation looks set to worsen. “If this course is not corrected, the instrumentalization of the criminal process and the establishment of a policy of torture in the prison system could persist,” it said.
On Tuesday, Minister of Justice and Security Gustavo Villatoro pledged there would be no let-up in the government’s campaign against the gangs, and promised to “eradicate this endemic evil”.
“This war against these terrorists will continue,” he said on state television.
Piquer said that Bukele had created a “false illusion” that he had found “the magic formula to solve the very complex problems of violence and criminality in a seemingly simple way”. She described the international community’s response as “timid”.
“The international community must respond in a robust, articulate and forceful manner, condemning any model of public security that is based on human rights violations,” she said.
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The world number one ends a hugely successful, seven-year partnership with coach Goran Ivanisevic.
World number one Novak Djokovic has ended his highly successful partnership with Croatian coach Goran Ivanisevic shortly before the clay season gets into full swing.
Ivanisevic, who claimed the singles title at Wimbledon in 2001 after finishing runner-up in 1992, 1994 and 1998, joined Djokovic’s team in 2018 and helped the 36-year-old win 12 Grand Slam titles.
“Goran and I decided to stop working together a few days ago,” 24-time major champion Djokovic said on Wednesday in an Instagram post with a picture of himself and Ivanisevic playing a board game.
“Our on-court chemistry had its ups and downs, but our friendship was always rock solid. In fact, I’m proud to say (not sure he is) that apart from winning tournaments together we also had a side battle in Parchisi going on … for many years.
“And that tournament never stops for us. Sefinjo, thanks for everything my friend. Love you.”
Djokovic failed in his bid to win a record 25th Grand Slam singles title at the Australian Open in January when he lost 6-1, 6-2, 6-7(6), 6-3 to Jannik Sinner in the semifinals.
The Serb pulled out of the ongoing Miami Open to limit the number of events he plays this year. That decision came after a shock third-round loss to Luca Nardi at Indian Wells.
Djokovic will gear up for the clay season as he bids to claim a fourth title at the French Open, which will take place from May 26 to June 9.
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Israeli assault hit health centre in southern Lebanon; Hezbollah attacks have killed one man in Israeli border town.
Hezbollah has said it launched dozens of rockets at Kiryat Shmona, an Israeli border town, in response to Israeli strikes on Lebanon’s southern village of al-Habbariyeh that killed seven people.
The Israeli military and the Iran-aligned Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, have been exchanging near-daily fire across the border since October when the current conflict in Gaza started.
About 30 rockets were launched from Lebanon towards northern Israel on Wednesday, according to the Israeli military. Israeli emergency services said a 25-year-old factory worker in Kiryat Shmona was killed.
The Israeli army’s attacks on al-Habbariyeh hit a paramedic centre linked to a Lebanese Sunni Muslim group. The Emergency and Relief Corps said the victims were volunteers.
Reporting from al-Habbariyeh, Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said young men were killed in the Israeli strikes that “totally destroyed” the emergency health centre.
“People here tell us that the men who were inside the building were paramedics, volunteers and university students, all in their early 20s,” Khodr said. “They were helping the people in this border region where we’ve seen daily exchanges of fire between Israel and … Hezbollah.”
While the Israeli army claimed it had killed a significant operative, Khodr reported that locals said “that is nothing but fabricated lies … this was a civilian target”.
Hezbollah promised to avenge the attack, saying it “will not pass without punishment”.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Health on Wednesday condemned the air strike and said “these unacceptable attacks violate international laws and norms, especially the Geneva Convention, which stresses the neutrality of health centres and health workers”.
Khodr reported: “This is not the first time a health centre has been hit in the ongoing confrontations along the border. We’ve seen numerous attacks against health centres especially in front-line villages and we have seen paramedics killed.”
The Israeli army claimed it struck “a military building” and killed a member of the al-Jamaa al-Islamiya, or the Islamic Group, a Lebanese political and armed outfit.
The target of the Israeli air strike had “promoted plots towards Israeli territory” and was “eliminated”, the military said in a post on social media, along with “other terrorists” who were in the building.
“These people will tell you that Israel’s strategy from day one has been to depopulate villages close to the border,” Khodr reported.
“They are trying to create some sort of a buffer zone, to make it difficult for civilians to live here. Nearly 100,000 people have already left. In this particular village, people are still here, but there is growing concern that it will start coming under fire,” she added.
Last month, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah said Israel will pay a price “in blood” for killing Lebanese civilians, signalling the conflict across the Lebanon-Israel border could intensify.
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Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest a month before national election comes under increasing global scrutiny.
India has strongly objected to remarks made by the United States and Germany on the arrest of key opposition leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal a month before its national election.
“India’s legal processes are based on an independent judiciary which is committed to objective and timely outcomes. Casting aspersions on that is unwarranted,” India’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday.
“In diplomacy, states are expected to be respectful of the sovereignty and internal affairs of others. This responsibility is even more so in case of fellow democracies. It could otherwise end up setting unhealthy precedents.”
Kejriwal was arrested by India’s main financial investigation agency last week on corruption charges. His Aam Aadmi Party (Common Man’s Party or AAP), which governs the national capital territory and the northern state of Punjab, denies the allegation, calling it a “fabricated case”.
On Monday, a US State Department spokesperson said it was closely following reports of Kejriwal’s arrest.
“We encourage a fair, transparent, and timely legal process for Chief Minister Kejriwal,” the spokesperson said in response to an emailed query about the case.
The US remarks came after similar comments by Germany prompted admonishment from New Delhi, which summoned a German envoy to protest against his government’s remarks about the arrest.
At a news conference on Friday, Sebastian Fischer, spokesperson for Germany’s foreign office, said that like anyone else facing accusations, Kejriwal was entitled to a fair and impartial trial.
“We assume and expect that the standards relating to independence of judiciary and basic democratic principles will also be applied in this case,” he said.
New Delhi summoned the German embassy’s deputy chief of mission, Georg Enzweiler, “and conveyed India’s strong protest” at the remarks, India’s foreign ministry said on Saturday.
“We see such remarks as interfering in our judicial process and undermining the independence of our judiciary,” it said in a statement. “Biased assumptions made on this account are most unwarranted.”
Asked about India’s response to Germany, the US State Department spokesperson said: “We would refer you to the German foreign ministry for comment on their discussions with the Indian government.”
The acting US deputy chief of mission in New Delhi was also summoned on Wednesday, Indian news agency ANI reported.
Washington has increasingly come to view India as an important strategic and economic partner in its effort to push back against China’s growing power worldwide.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has frequently shown itself sensitive to human rights criticism, and rights advocates have accused US President Joe Biden’s administration of putting strategic considerations above rights issues in its dealings with New Delhi.
New Delhi and Berlin also share good ties, and the two countries have been coming closer on strategic issues, including defence technology.
India’s financial investigation agency, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which arrested Kejriwal, has launched probes into at least four other state chief ministers or their family members – all of them Modi’s political opponents.
The entire top leadership of the AAP is in jail, including Kejriwal’s deputy Manish Sisodia. In February, Jharkhand state’s Chief Minister Hemant Soren was arrested and jailed on corruption charges.
But the government and Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) deny any political interference in the cases involving their opponents.
Nearly a billion Indians will vote to elect a new government in a six-week-long parliamentary election starting on April 19, the largest democratic exercise in the world.
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Pending final approval, bill will cement Thai credentials among Asia’s most liberal societies on LGBTQ issues.
Thailand is set to become the first Southeast Asian nation to recognise equal marriage after politicians passed a same-sex marriage bill.
The lower house of parliament overwhelmingly voted in favour of the bill, with 400 supporting its passage and just 10 against it in a final reading on Wednesday. Should the bill take effect, Thailand would be just the third Asian country to legalise gay marriage.
The bill now requires approval from the country’s Senate, and finally endorsement from the king, before becoming law. More than a decade in the making, the legislation could take effect within 120 days of royal approval.
“I want to invite you all to make history,” said Danuphorn Punnakanta, chairman of the parliamentary committee, ahead of the vote. “We did this for all Thai people to reduce disparity in society and start creating equality.”
The legislation would change references to “men”, “women”, “husbands” and “wives” in the marriage law to gender-neutral terms. It would also grant LGBTQ couples inheritance and adoption rights equal to those of heterosexual marriages.
While Thailand enjoys a welcoming reputation for the international LGBTQ community, activists have struggled for decades against conservative attitudes and values.
The Constitutional Court in 2020 ruled that current matrimonial law, which only recognises heterosexual couples, was constitutional. But it also recommended legislation be expanded to ensure minorities’ rights.
In December, the parliament approved the first readings of four different draft bills on same-sex marriage and tasked a committee to consolidate them into a single draft.
On the news that the bill had been approved, one representative brought a huge rainbow flag into the chamber.
Across Asia, only Taiwan and Nepal recognise same-sex marriage.
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People in Gaza and Sudan face famine on a catastrophic scale, the UN and humanitarian organisations are warning.
In Gaza, 27 people – 23 of them children – have starved to death as a result of what international bodies say is Israel’s use of hunger as a weapon of war.
And in Sudan, the World Food Programme (WFP) is already receiving reports of people starving to death and is on course to be “the world’s worst hunger crisis”, a UN briefing to the Security Council warned in March of this year.
Starvation, in a few words, is when the human body is deprived of food for so long that it suffers and in many cases dies.
“It’s a very cruel, slow death,” Dr Omar Abdel-Mannan, a British Egyptian paediatrician and neurologist who has volunteered in Gaza said. “You basically just waste away.”
For ethical reasons, scientists have been unable to pinpoint how long starvation takes to kill. However, based on observation, it is thought the human body can last up to three weeks without food.
Starvation occurs over three stages.
The first starts as early as a skipped meal; the second comes with any prolonged period of fasting when the body relies upon stored fats for energy.
The third, and often fatal, stage is when all stored fats have been depleted and the body turns to bone and muscle as sources of energy.
In the early stages, as food is first denied, the body feeds on a starchy substance called glycogen, which is stored in the liver.
Initially, the body relies upon glycogen, before turning to fats and then muscles, causing the body to shrink and the starving person to assume a gaunt, hollow-cheeked look.
The brain is deprived of the energy it requires to function, so the starving person experiences irritability, mood swings and difficulty concentrating.
“Basically, the body just slows down, as it pulls energy from other organs to keep the brain and the heart going,” Abdel-Mannan explained.
The heart’s function will also be affected eventually, with a corresponding drop in blood pressure and pulse.
An adult heart typically weighs about 300g (11oz), but records show that it can shrink to 140g (5oz) in the later stages of starvation.
Eventually, if no infection takes hold in the body, the heart will fail.
Starvation usually causes the belly to bloat, as well as nausea and vomiting.
“In children, marasmus and kwashiorkor [severe protein deficiency causing fluid retention and a swollen abdomen] are the most common acute conditions from starvation/malnutrition and require specialist management to prevent early mortality,” Abdel-Mannan said.
The starving person’s digestive tract muscles are sometimes affected, and they can lose the ability to push food through the gut. Other potential complications, many severe, can arise, such as pancreatitis.
As the immune system shuts down, most starving people succumb to secondary infections like gastroenteritis, where the body expels what remaining food it can, rather than starvation, according to Abdel-Mannan.
Without the fat and cholesterol drawn from food, the production of testosterone, oestrogen and thyroid hormones is affected.
These hormones are needed to keep bones strong and the body’s cycles regulated. Without them, bones become weak, menstruation can be affected and the risks of hypothermia rise. Brittle hair or complete hair loss, can also occur.
How do you die from starvation? The pain of hunger, which you might expect, is relatively short-lived before the body works to shore up its defences.
However, the aching caused by hunger can lead to acute physical and psychological distress in the short term.
The damage to the human body is often so extreme that giving a starving person too much food or liquid nutrition in the first four to seven days can lead to a rush of glycogen, fat and protein production in cells that could prove fatal.
“Refeeding syndrome [where food is suddenly available] can also kill patients,” Abdel-Mannan said. “Food needs to be introduced gradually and under medical controls.”
Even if refeeding is successful, starvation survivors can feel the physical and psychological effects for a lifetime.
In infants, “at least those under the age of two, starvation can limit the brain’s development, limiting children from reaching their full potential cognitively and also leaving lasting negative effects on future health,” Abdel-Mannan said.
In both Gaza and Sudan, a belligerent party is being accused of keeping food from people as part of their arsenal.
Israel is limiting aid to some 2.3 million trapped and besieged Palestinians in Gaza, pushing 1.1 million people into “catastrophic hunger”, with 300,000 people trapped in northern Gaza facing famine.
In Sudan, the warring factions – the national army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces – are blocking the delivery of aid to people who live in areas they do not control, resulting in nearly 18 million people facing acute food insecurity, the WFP says.
Starving civilians is a violation of international humanitarian law.
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Farmers threw beets, sprayed manure at police and set hay alight in Brussels as hundreds of tractors sealed off streets close to the European Union headquarters, where agriculture ministers sought to ease a crisis that has led to months of protests across the 27-member bloc.
The farmers on Tuesday protested against what they see as excessive red tape and unfair trading practices as well as increased environmental measures and cheap imports from Ukraine. “Let us make a living from our profession,” read one billboard on a tractor blocking a main thoroughfare littered with potatoes, eggs and manure.
As the protests turned violent, police used tear gas and water cannon to keep the farmers and some 250 tractors at bay, even as ministers met to push through measures meant to calm the crisis. Authorities asked commuters to stay out of Brussels and work from home as much as possible.
Several farmers, police and firefighters suffered injuries, but none was life-threatening. The government lambasted the farmers for failing to contain violent elements that threw e-bikes off a bridge and set the entry to a subway station aflame.
With protests taking place from Finland to Greece, Poland and Ireland, the farmers have already won concessions from EU and national authorities, from a loosening of controls on farms to a weakening of pesticide and environmental rules.
A major plan to better protect nature in the bloc and fight climate change was indefinitely postponed on Monday, underscoring how the protests have had a deep influence on politics.
EU member states on Tuesday gave their provisional approval to proposals that amount to weakening or cutting rules in areas like crop rotation, soil cover protection and tillage methods. Small farmers, representing about two-thirds of the workforce and the most active in the protest movement, will be exempt from some controls and penalties.
The EU parliament is expected to decide on the proposals in late April.
Environmentalists and climate activists say a change in EU policies under pressure from farmers is regrettable, warning that short-term concessions will come to haunt the bloc in a generation when climate change will hit the continent even harder.
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Ukraine, Poland and Georgia are the last three teams to qualify for the 24-team continental championship.
Ukraine came from behind to beat Iceland in a playoff to qualify for Euro 2024, Poland secured their place at the tournament with a penalty shootout victory over Wales and Georgia qualified for a first ever major tournament in a dramatic night for European football.
The 24-nation Euro 2024 lineup was finalised on Tuesday with three qualifying playoffs giving a stronger Eastern European flavour to the tournament that opens on June 14 in Germany.
Mykhailo Mudryk’s sweeping low shot in the 84th minute lifted Ukraine to a 2-1 victory over Iceland and a second late comeback win in the playoffs for a team representing the war-torn country.
The “home” game for Ukraine was played in neutral Poland because international games cannot be played in Kyiv for security reasons during the war against Russia, whose team has been banned from trying to qualify by UEFA.
Thank you, guys!
Thank you, team!
For significant emotions for the entire country.
For the important victory and making it to EURO.
For proving once again: whenever Ukrainians face difficulties but do not give up and continue to fight, Ukrainians certainly win.
In times, when… pic.twitter.com/THdnOw8k0B— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 26, 2024
Georgia and star forward Khvicha Kvaratskhelia will make their major tournament debut at Euro 2024 after beating Greece 4-2 in a penalty shootout. It had been a tense and testy 0-0 draw in a raucous atmosphere in Tbilisi.
The decisive penalty was scored by substitute Nika Kvekveskiri placed his perfect shot low into the corner to seal Georgia’s 4-2 win.
Wild celebrations saw thousands of Georgia fans in a 50,000 crowd at the national stadium pour onto the field and some climbed the goalposts to sit on the crossbar.
Georgian players have been European champions before – in the Soviet Union squad that won the inaugural title in 1960.
Now the independent republic has earned the right to make its own football history in Germany.
Meanwhile, Poland became the last team to book their ticket to Germany, beating Wales 5-4 in a penalty shootout in Cardiff also after a 0-0 draw.
Poland captain Robert Lewandowski, who had scored the first spot-kick of the shootout, could not bear to watch the action when his goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny pushed away the final penalty taken by Dan James.
“It’s big because I probably would have finished my international career tonight had we lost the game,” Szczesny said.
Poland have played at every Euros edition since star forward Lewandowski made his national team debut in 2008, including as co-host with Ukraine at Euro 2012.
Poland will go into a tough Group D with France, the Netherlands and Austria.
Ukraine are in Group F with Belgium, Romania and Slovakia.
Georgia go into Group F to face Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal, Turkey and the Czech Republic.
Euro 2024 will be played in 10 German cities from June 14 to July 14.
Ready for EURO 2024! 🤩#EURO2024 pic.twitter.com/Fb7WEdgJff
— UEFA EURO 2024 (@EURO2024) March 26, 2024
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