China tries to ‘bury the memory’ and trauma of zero-COVID era | Coronavirus pandemic News

When Evelyn Ma’s two-year-old daughter had a persistently high fever and a bad cough earlier this month, she and her husband began to worry.

The couple decided to take their daughter to a nearby children’s hospital in the city of Jinan.

But as Ma walked through the doors with her daughter in her arms, she found a scene of chaos.

“Doctors and nurses were rushing around everywhere between long lines of patients waiting their turn, and people were even sitting on the floor and against the walls,” Ma, who is 36 and works as a sales representative in China’s northeastern Shandong province, told Al Jazeera.

China experienced a sharp rise in cases of influenza, pneumonia, RSV and common cold viruses, particularly among children, in early October. By the next month, the surge in the number of people seeking medical attention had put a strain on hospitals, especially those catering to children.

“We arrived at the hospital in the early morning, but we didn’t get to see a doctor until the late afternoon, and I think that was only because my daughter’s symptoms were quite bad and my husband and I made a fuss,” Ma said.

The rising infections and reports of undiagnosed pneumonia sparked concern that the world was on the cusp of another novel pandemic outbreak spreading from China, after COVID-19 also first appeared as undiagnosed pneumonia in the central city of Wuhan.

But after requesting data from China, the World Health Organization (WHO) concluded there was no cause for alarm because the evidence suggested there was no new pathogen.

The jump in cases, it appears, was more a reflection of the return of illnesses that had been suppressed by the country’s prolonged pandemic lockdowns.

Ma’s daughter soon recovered, but the experience brought back upsetting memories.

“Last time I was at the hospital was in late December last year, and I was also sitting in a crowded waiting room filled with coughing people,” she said.

“Back then I was holding the hand of my grandmother who was very sick with COVID,” Ma said.

The sudden U-turn on the zero-COVID policy followed a series of rare protests across the country [File: Thomas Peter/Reuters]

Just a few weeks before that, the Chinese authorities had abandoned the strict COVID measures that were a pillar of the country’s so-called zero-COVID policy after protests in several Chinese cities against the continued enforcement of lockdowns.

For three years until then, the zero-COVID policy had defined – and limited – Chinese people’s interactions with each other and the outside world in the name of combatting the pandemic.

“So many people suffered under the zero-COVID policy, and so many people died when it ended,” Ma said.

“Because of that, my family and I are traumatised to this day.”

Mental health struggles

Ma’s grandmother succumbed to COVID-19 in early January.

At about the same time, 29-year-old translator Lily Wang from Shenzhen also lost her grandmother to the virus.

She blames the authorities’ abrupt decision to abandon the zero-COVID policy for her death.

“If they had just given us a warning or given us time to prepare, we might have been able to save her,” Wang told Al Jazeera.

A wave of infections swept across China after the sudden end of the policy posing a particular hazard to elderly Chinese of whom only 40 percent had received a booster shot by December 2022. In the months that followed, upwards of almost two million more people died compared with the same period in previous years, according to a study by Hong Xiao and Joseph Unger of the Public Health Sciences Division at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center that was published in August.

While the death of Wang’s grandmother was traumatic for her whole family, the strict lockdowns of China’s cities, which became a recurring phenomenon throughout 2022, were traumatic for Wang personally.

Her neighbourhood in the southern city of Shenzhen was repeatedly placed under total lockdown for months on end to quell flare-ups of COVID infections.

“We were not allowed to go outside – not even to stretch our legs, do grocery shopping or take out the garbage,” she said.

A man opens his mouth for a health worker to take a swab of his throat he is wearing a t-short and shorts and carrying a patterned umbrella. The worker is in a white hazmat suit.
Regular and relentless testing was a key feature of the zero-COVID strategy [File: Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo]

Wang was living alone in a small apartment at the time, and food supplies, provided by the authorities, were often late to arrive at her building.

“I was hungry, lonely and trapped, and I started to suffer from panic attacks,” she added.

As soon as the COVID policy ended, she moved out of the apartment and back home with her parents.

“After zero-COVID, I just couldn’t stay in the apartment any more,” she said.

“Even today, it is still difficult for me to be alone for more than a few days.”

Ma from Jinan has also struggled to recover mentally.

“I am much more concerned about the future than I was before 2022,” she said.

During the lockdown of her family’s neighbourhood, they also experienced food supplies arriving late.

“Now I get nervous when we don’t have much food left in the apartment, so I make sure that we have lots of meals available in the freezer and the refrigerator in case something happens,” she explained.

Hou Feng, a 31-year-old programmer from Shanghai, has also had trouble sleeping since the strict lockdown of Shanghai that took place from April until June 2022.

“During that time, people in my building contacted the authorities to accuse each other of breaking the COVID rules,” Hou told Al Jazeera.

Residents of Shanghai, China’s biggest city, were required to undergo constant COVID-19 testing, and it was obligatory to report to one of the city’s quarantine centres if the result was positive.

Hou witnessed his screaming neighbour getting dragged out of her home by the authorities when she refused to leave of her own volition after testing positive.

He still has nightmares about people in white hazmat suits breaking down his door and taking him away to a quarantine facility.

“I just saw some really bad sides of China during the lockdown that I never thought I would see.”

Loud success, quiet failure

While the zero-COVID policy ended in failure and trauma, according to Hou, it was initially quite successful.

“In 2020 and 2021, we luckily didn’t really feel the pandemic in China,” he said.

After a late response to the initial COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, the Chinese authorities subsequently managed to get the pandemic under control, and by mid-2020, normal life had resumed and social order was restored.

That was a contrast to several high-income countries in the Western world where health services struggled when the pandemic first struck, according to assistant professor Yan Long, who has studied the development of Chinese public health policies at the University of California, Berkeley.

That also made the zero-COVID policy a source of national pride in China and an opportunity for the Chinese leadership to showcase, at least domestically, that China had outdone countries such as the United States.

“It was a way to say, ‘Look, democracy has failed, we succeeded’,” Long told Al Jazeera.

The success began to fray, however, with the emergence of more infectious COVID-19 variants such as omicron. Immense resources were poured into constant rounds of mass testing and the implementation of lockdowns, but the measures failed to put an end to new outbreaks.

“The zero-COVID policy became financially unsustainable, and scientifically impossible, while the confidence in the policy also began to drastically decline,” Long said.

“By 2022, COVID was no longer the biggest fear. People were more afraid of the disruption of the lockdowns.”

After asking Beijing for more data on the ‘influenza-like illness’, the WHO concluded it was not a new pathogen [File: Jade Gao/AFP]

Hou from Shanghai agrees that towards the end, the zero-COVID policy felt worse than COVID-19.

“The policy made life a living hell,” he said.

Hou knows of many people who experienced traumatic episodes during the lockdowns as well as in the subsequent rapid reopening of society.

“But unlike me, most people I know don’t want to talk about the COVID times. They just want to forget them,” he said.

Long, the academic, doubts that Chinese people have had a chance to heal after what happened.

“It is now a year later, and there has been no discussion about COVID, no reflection about what was right and what was wrong,” she said.

“When you bury the memory, you don’t learn any lessons, which means there is no guarantee that the same mistakes won’t be made again.”

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DR Congo votes on second day of chaotic general elections | Elections News

The vote across Africa’s second-largest country was derailed on Wednesday over logistical issues.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has concluded a second day of voting in chaotic elections after logistical problems forced officials to extend the balloting.

Voting in the impoverished but mineral-rich Central African nation extended into Thursday after some polling stations did not open at all on the first day of the general elections.

Some opposition candidates and observers said the unscheduled extension of the vote could open the results up to legal challenges.

The DRC, one of the poorest countries in the world despite its vast reserves of copper, cobalt and gold, has a history of disputed elections that can turn violent.

Africa’s second largest country held four concurrent elections on Wednesday – to pick a president, national and regional lawmakers, and local councillors.

President Felix Tshisekedi, 60, is running for a second term against a backdrop of years of economic growth but little job creation and soaring inflation.

Tshisekedi, who took office in 2019 and faced 18 challengers, says he wants a second term to “consolidate his gains”.

‘Genuine shipwreck’

Wednesday’s voting was marked by massive delays nationwide as the Independent National Electoral Commission struggled to deliver materials to voting stations long after polls were meant to have opened.

Denis Kadima, the head of the commission, declared on Wednesday night that people in places where casting ballots had proved impossible would vote on Thursday.

It was not clear how many polling stations that involved, but voting took place in cities in the eastern DRC, in the southeastern city of Lubumbashi and in the capital, Kinshasa, according to the Agence France-Presse news agency.

The vote was mostly peaceful, but in the east, a polling booth was ransacked by displaced people who could not cast ballots. In Kinshasa, journalist Pascal Mulegwa was allegedly assaulted by pro-government activists, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Opposition presidential candidate Moise Katumbi, whose team has been compiling its own vote count, said results so far showed him in the lead. He made the claim in a joint statement with opposition backers that also alleged widespread irregularities in the conduct of the vote.

The former ruling coalition, the Common Front for Congo of ex-President Joseph Kabila, called the elections a parody that had brought shame on the country.

“What we witnessed today was a genuine shipwreck of the electoral process,” the coalition said in a statement on Wednesday, as it asked its members to stand by for further instructions on actions to be taken.

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Trump ally Rudy Giuliani files for bankruptcy following defamation case | Courts News

Giuliani was ordered to pay a $148m penalty for falsely accusing two 2020 election workers of facilitating fraud.

Rudy Giuliani has filed for bankruptcy, just days after he was ordered to pay $148m to two former Georgia election workers he falsely accused of fraud as he worked to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss.

The former mayor of New York, in a bankruptcy petition seeking protection from his creditors on Thursday, listed assets of between $1m and $10m and liabilities of up to $500m.

The largest of his debts is the $148 million a federal jury in Washington, DC ordered him to pay on December 15 to Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss for repeatedly making false claims that they engaged in 2020 election fraud.

The Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition filed with a New York bankruptcy court also listed debts ranging from the hundreds of thousands to the millions of dollars to the Internal Revenue Service, New York tax authorities and his former lawyers and accountants.

“Unknown” amounts were also recorded as being owed to Hunter Biden, former president Joe Biden’s son, and the voting machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic.

Hunter Biden, Dominion and Smartmatic have all filed lawsuits against Giuliani. They are ongoing.

A spokesperson for Giuliani said the bankruptcy filing will give him time to appeal the $148m penalty and ensure that other creditors are treated fairly.

“No person could have reasonably believed that Mayor Rudy Giuliani would be able to pay such a high punitive amount,” spokesperson Ted Goodman said.

The 79-year-old Giuliani was found liable in August by US District Judge Beryl Howell of defaming Freeman and Moss, both Fulton County poll workers, with his 2020 election lies on behalf of Trump.

An eight-person federal jury awarded Freeman and Moss more than $16m each for defamation, $20m each for emotional distress and $75m in punitive damages.

Giuliani, who led Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the results of the election, posted a video of the pair that falsely accused them of engaging in fraud during ballot counting and made numerous other baseless claims about them.

Freeman and Moss, who are Black, told the jury during the four-day trial that Giuliani’s false accusations upended their lives and made them the target of racist threats.

“The flame that Giuliani lit with those lies and passed to so many others to keep that flame blazing changed every aspect of our lives, our homes, our family, our work, our sense of safety, our mental health,” Moss said.

The defamation case is just one of a number of legal challenges facing Giuliani, who has been indicted on racketeering charges in Georgia along with Trump and others for allegedly conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in the southern state.

Giuliani was New York mayor from 1994 to 2001, guiding the city through the shock of the September 11, 2001 attacks and becoming known as “America’s Mayor” – before signing up as Trump’s personal lawyer while he was in the White House.

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Entire Gaza population facing hunger crisis, famine risk: UN-backed report | Israel-Palestine conflict News

The proportion of households affected by acute food insecurity is largest ever recorded globally, the report says.

The entire 2.3 million population of Gaza is facing crisis levels of hunger and the risk of famine is increasing each day, a United Nations-backed report says.

The proportion of households in Gaza affected by high levels of acute food insecurity is the largest ever recorded globally, according to the report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) published on Thursday.

The extent of hunger in Gaza has eclipsed even the near-famines in Afghanistan and Yemen of recent years, according to figures in the report.

‘Everybody in Gaza is hungry’

“It doesn’t get any worse,’’ the World Food Programme’s chief economist, Arif Husain, said.

“I have never seen something at the scale that is happening in Gaza and at this speed – how quickly it has happened in just a matter of two months.”

The report by 23 UN and nongovernmental agencies found that the entire population in Gaza is in a food crisis with 576,600 people at catastrophic – or starvation – levels.

“It is a situation where pretty much everybody in Gaza is hungry,” Husain said.

“People are very, very close to large outbreaks of disease because their immune systems have become so weak because they don’t have enough nourishment,” he said.

International aid agencies say Gaza is suffering from shortages of food [Fatima Shbair/AP]

The report said every single person in Gaza is expected to face high levels of acute food insecurity in the next six weeks.

The 23 agencies forecast that in the “most likely scenario”, the entire population of the Gaza Strip would be at “crisis or worse” levels of hunger by February 7 after four months of war. Under the IPC’s five-phase food insecurity classification, crisis in phase three, emergency is phase four and catastrophe or famine is phase five.

“This is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified for any given area or country,” the report said.

The international humanitarian organisation CARE called the figures “alarming”.

Risk of famine

The humanitarian situation in Gaza has deteriorated rapidly since Israel began a major military operation on October 7 with heavy air strikes and a ground offensive laying waste to wide areas of the enclave.

“There is a risk of famine, and it is increasing each day that the current situation of intense hostilities and restricted humanitarian access persists or worsens,” the IPC for Gaza said.

The IPC sets the global standard for determining the severity of a food crisis using a complex set of technical criteria.

The report warned that the risk of famine is “increasing each day”, blaming the hunger on insufficient aid entering Gaza.

Trucks bringing aid from Egypt have delivered some food, water and medicine, but the UN says the quantity of food is just 10 percent of what is needed for the territory’s inhabitants, most of whom are displaced.

Distribution of aid within Gaza has been hampered by military operations, inspections of aid demanded by Israel, communications blackouts and shortages of fuel.

Some desperate Palestinians in Gaza have jumped onto aid trucks to try to grab scarce supplies of food and other goods. There have been reports of residents eating donkey meat and emaciated patients begging for food.

Meanwhile, the death toll from Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza has surpassed 20,000, 70 percent of them women and children.

About 1.9 million Gaza residents – more than 80 percent of the population – have been driven from their homes. More than a million are cramming UN shelters.

The war has also pushed Gaza’s health sector into collapse. Only nine of its 36 health facilities are still partially functioning – and all are located in the south, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.



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India’s Sakshi Malik quits over election of new wrestling federation chief | Sexual Assault News

Top wrestler quits the sport after Indian wrestling body replaces the powerful president accused of sexual abuse with his close ally.

A top Indian wrestler has announced she will quit the sport in protest after the country’s wrestling federation replaced a president accused of sexually abusing female athletes with his close ally.

Sakshi Malik, an acclaimed wrestler who won a bronze medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics and led protests against Brij Bhushan Singh, the former chief of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), announced her retirement on Thursday.

“We slept for 40 days on the roads and a lot of people from several parts of the country came to support us,” Malik, 31, told a news conference in New Delhi, referring to the protests earlier this year.

“If Brij Bhushan Singh’s business partner and a close aide is elected as the president of WFI, I quit wrestling”, she said before leaving the conference with tears in her eyes.

Malik became an outspoken voice over harassment and discrimination faced by female athletes in India, a plight underscored by charges filed against Singh in June accusing him of sexually harassing six female wrestlers, including a minor, during his time leading the WFI.

Singh, who is also a six-time parliamentarian and member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), denied any wrongdoing, dramatically stating then that he will hang himself if the accusations are proven to be true.

Asked about Malik’s decision to quit, 66-year-old Singh on Thursday said, “I have nothing to do with it.”

Singh was stripped of his administrative duties in January, and the government promised to investigate the accusations. But Malik and other athletes renewed their protests in April after the government refused to disclose the findings of a panel looking into the incidents.

In recent months, Singh actively campaigned for Sanjay Singh to replace him and predicted his victory to the local press.

On Thursday, the WFI voted to replace Brij Bhushan Singh with Sanjay Singh, who defeated Anita Sheoran, another contender for the presidency who had won a gold medal in the 2010 Commonwealth Games and had supported the campaign by the athletes to bring attention to the allegations of abuse.

“It’s a very big victory of truth over lies,” Sanjay Singh told members of the media after securing 40 out of the 47 votes by the federation’s member institutions. He told reporters that he was committed to supporting wrestlers, but did not comment on Malik’s announcement.

The United World Wrestling (UWW), the global wrestling body which suspended the Indian federation in August over the wrestlers’ protest, is yet to comment on the election.



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UN Human Rights Office calls for investigation into unlawful Gaza killings | Israel-Palestine conflict News

NewsFeed

“They were executed.” The UN Human Rights Office is calling for an immediate investigation into a ‘possible war crime’ after receiving information about Israeli forces allegedly killing Palestinian men in front of family members in northern Gaza. Al Jazeera spoke to several witnesses; these are their accounts.

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EU top court rules FIFA, UEFA unlawfully blocked Super League plans | Football News

The two football governing bodies contravened law by stopping the formation of league, the European Court of Justice says.

The European Union’s top court has ruled that UEFA and FIFA broke EU law in blocking the formation of a rival Super League competition.

Thursday’s ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) marks a serious legal setback for UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) and for football’s world governing body, FIFA.

The court found that the two sporting bodies threatening to ban future Super League clubs and players from taking part in their competitions was illegal.

“FIFA and UEFA rules making any new interclub football project subject to their prior approval, such as the Super League, and prohibiting clubs and players from playing in those competitions, are unlawful,” it said.

In early 2021, 12 of Europe’s biggest clubs announced they had signed up to the planned Super League, triggering a furious backlash from fans and a stark warning from UEFA that clubs and players who took part would be barred from competitions like the World Cup.

Chelsea fans protest in London against the club’s then decision to be included in a new European Super League [File: Matt Dunham/AP]

Within 48 hours, nine of the 12 rebel clubs – including six from the English Premier League – backed down and the project collapsed, leaving promoters A22 Sports Management to launch a legal challenge through the Spanish courts, which referred the question to the ECJ.

In response to the Super League threat, UEFA launched a major reform of the Champions League starting in 2024, with 36 teams involved instead of 32. The clubs will play in a single league competition, which will replace the current group stage, guaranteeing at least eight matches for each team.

European clubs, leagues reject Super League

Though the Super League organisers welcomed the ECJ’s ruling, major leagues and clubs moved quickly to support the status quo.

Manchester United were one of the first to say they remained committed to playing in competitions run by UEFA, as did German champions Bayern Munich.

“Our position has not changed. We remain fully committed to participation in UEFA competitions, and to positive cooperation with UEFA, the Premier League, and fellow clubs through the ECA on the continued development of the European game,” United said.

Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur were the other five Premier League clubs involved before pulling out.

Bayern Munich said they were committed to UEFA competitions, saying the door for the Super League “remains closed” for the German champions.

“The Bundesliga is the foundation of FC Bayern, just as all national leagues are the foundation of other European football clubs,” Bayern CEO Jan Christian Dreesen said.

“It is therefore our duty and our deep conviction to strengthen them, not to weaken them. We are also committed to the European club competitions under the umbrella of UEFA.”

The European Club Association (ECA), which represents nearly 500 clubs across the continent, said the football world had “moved on from the Super League years ago”.

“Through ECA, clubs today are already at the heart of decision-making in relation to the competitions they participate in,” it said. “Most importantly, football is a social contract, not a legal contract.”

France’s Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) said it “unequivocally supports” competitions organised by UEFA.

The Italian Football Federation (FIGC) reiterated its intention to protect the national championships, “for the defence of the broader and more general principle of sporting merit and the respect of international calendars”.

“The FIGC believes that the Super League is not a project compatible with these conditions and will always act in pursuing the general interests of Italian football,” it added.

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Angola to leave OPEC over disagreement on oil production quotas | OPEC News

Oil minister says the country ‘gains nothing’ from remaining in the group after disagreements emerge over production cuts.

Angola says it will leave the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) over a disagreement regarding production quotas, a move that will bring the group down to 12 members.

Speaking on public television on Thursday, Diamantino Azevedo, minister for mineral resources, petroleum and gas, said Angola, which produces about 1.1 million barrels of oil a day, is leaving OPEC because it was not serving the country’s interests.

“We feel that … Angola currently gains nothing by remaining in the organisation and, in defence of its interests, decided to leave,” Azevedo was quoted as saying in a statement issued by the president’s office.

Angola, which first joined OPEC in 2007, has struggled to meet production quotas over the past several years. The country is joining others, such as Qatar and Ecuador, that have left OPEC in the past decade.

Questions about potential production cuts sought by leading oil producers such as Saudi Arabia have been a source of recent debate within the group.

Without Angola, OPEC countries will produce about 27 million barrels of oil per day, about 27 percent of the global supply.

But while Angola was a relatively small player in OPEC, the country’s departure has raised larger questions about the future of the organisation.

Crude prices dropped by more than 1.5 percent after the announcement.

“From an oil market supply perspective, the impact is minimal as oil production in Angola was on a downward trend and higher production would first require higher investments,” said Giovanni Staunovo, a commodity analyst with UBS.

“However, prices still fell on concern of the unity of OPEC+ as a group, but there is no indication that more heavyweights within the alliance intend to follow the path of Angola.”

Oil and gas make up about 90 percent of Angola’s exports and are a crucial economic lifeline for the country.

Last month, Azevedo’s office protested against an OPEC decision to reduce its production quota for 2024, concerned that it would damage Angola’s ability to increase its output capacity.

OPEC and its allies in OPEC+ have agreed to cut production to prop up oil prices.

Angola’s production capacity peaked in 2008 at 2 million barrels per day but has dropped since due to ageing infrastructure.

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Will the US again veto the UNSC resolution on Gaza? | Israel-Palestine conflict News

A United Nations Security Council (UNSC) vote to call for the suspension of hostilities in Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid there has been postponed for a third day in a row.

The delays come as the UN chief has sounded an alarm about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the besieged Palestinian enclave, which has been facing relentless Israeli bombardment since October 7. More than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands are going hungry due to an Israeli blockade.

Here is a recap of the developments surrounding the draft resolution:

What is the UAE-led UNSC draft resolution on Gaza?

The United Arab Emirates circulated a “final version” of a draft resolution late on Friday. The first version of the draft was circulated on December 8 after the United States vetoed a resolution calling for a Gaza ceasefire.

In short, this is what Friday’s draft called for:

  • All parties to the conflict should comply with international humanitarian law and protect civilians, hospitals, UN facilities, and humanitarian and medical personnel.
  • An urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities should take place alongside the unhindered flow of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
  • Parties to the conflict should allow and facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza through land, sea and air routes. This includes prompt implementation of the opening of the Karem Abu Salem border crossing, called Kerem Shalom in Hebrew.
  • States that are not party to the conflict are welcome to permit free passage of humanitarian relief. This particularly refers to Egypt and the coordination of its border crossing with Gaza at the southern Gaza city of Rafah. The UN will exclusively monitor all aid that enters through these routes.

The draft now looks quite different after several changes. The revisions are owing to a diplomatic back and forth that has continued for days. The draft has been watered down to secure a compromise and still awaits voting.

The latest draft also calls for an “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages”. Security Council Report, an independent think tank that monitors the UNSC, said this language was added following requests from several members, including France, Japan, the United Kingdom and the US.

Monday’s developments

The draft circulated on Friday was expected to come to a vote as early as Monday, depending on negotiations between the UAE and the US.

“We have engaged constructively and transparently throughout the entire process in an effort to unite around a product that will pass,” an anonymous US official told the Reuters news agency. “The UAE knows exactly what can pass and what cannot. It is up to them if they want to get this done.”

The resolution put forth by the UAE on December 8 called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and was vetoed by the US while the UK abstained. All the other 13 Security Council members voted for it. The negotiations that followed have focussed on ensuring that the US does not veto the resolution again.

Diplomats reported that the US wanted to tone down the language on a cessation of hostilities.

Al Jazeera’s Rami Ayari reported that the voting was pushed to a later time on Monday and he was told “cessation” would be replaced with “suspension” after the US objected to the language.

Security Council Report added that the UK had requested substituting “immediate” cessation of hostilities with language calling for an “urgent and sustainable” cessation of hostilities. Language calling “for an urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities” had appeared in the draft that was put forth on Friday.

Ayari later reported that voting had been pushed to Tuesday morning to allow more time for negotiations. “The US is eager to avoid using their veto again, according to several sources,” the Al Jazeera correspondent wrote.

Tuesday’s developments

On Tuesday, an updated draft was circulated, and “cessation” was changed to “suspension”.

Besides this, the clause that talks about the UN monitoring aid initially said the UN would notify the Palestinian Authority and Israel of the humanitarian nature of the aid without prejudice to inspections carried out outside Gaza by states that are not party to the conflict. In the new version, it adds that the UN would notify authorities without prejudice to any inspection that does not unduly delay the provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Akbar Shahid Ahmad, the senior foreign affairs reporter from the HuffPost, posted on X that a Muslim diplomat said a US veto was likely.

Ayari reported that Washington remained unswayed despite the revisions, and the vote was delayed again to Wednesday morning.

Security Council Report said that during the negotiations, “the US apparently objected to references to Israel as ‘the occupying power’ and to language that Washington believed could be read as imposing binding legal obligations under the UN Charter.”

US Department of State spokesperson Matthew Miller said Washington would welcome a resolution that fully supports addressing the humanitarian needs of the people in Gaza but the details of the text matter.

Wednesday’s developments

The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, reportedly met with US President Joe Biden on Wednesday.

Ahmad posted on X that a diplomat told him Israel was heavily involved in the US decision-making on aid inspections. He also reported that Biden had instructed the US mission at the UN to veto a Security Council resolution on Gaza on Thursday, according to a diplomat.

He added that the diplomat said the main sticking point for Biden was transferring control of the aid inspections to the UN, “a step the US has advocated for in other warzones”.

PassBlue, an independent organisation that monitors the UN, posted on X that US diplomats were all right with the UN’s monitoring of aid until Israel saw it.

Ayari said some were under the impression that the repeated delays on voting were due to attempts to get Biden on board. “Those efforts appear to have failed,” he said.

Security Council Report also reported that part of the negotiations involved other member states suggesting ways to make the aid monitoring system quicker so it doesn’t add another layer to the aid provision to Gaza.

The US came back with a rewrite that essentially removed the UN aid monitoring mechanism.

Voting on the resolution has been further delayed until Thursday.

Thursday’s outlook

The UAE’s ambassador to the UN, Lana Zaki Nusseibeh, has voiced optimism for the resolution to pass.

“I am optimistic, and if this fails, then we will continue to keep trying because we have to keep trying,” Nusseibeh told reporters. “There is too much suffering on the ground for the council to continue to fail on this. … We have a resolution, and we need to build on that.”

Ayari wrote on X that Arab countries and members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation had proposed new language to the US on aid monitoring by the UN.

They are awaiting Washington’s response, but “the initial signals are not good. If there had been agreement then the updated text would have been circulated to #UNSC members already,” Ayari said.

Ahmad posted that a diplomat said the likelihood of the US vetoing the resolution on Thursday morning remains high.

To pass, the resolution needs at least nine of the 15 Security Council members to vote for it and none of the permanent members – the US, France, China, the UK and Russia – to veto it.



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Czech police say people killed in shooting in downtown Prague | Gun Violence News

Czech police say a shooting in downtown Prague has killed an unspecified number of people and wounded others.

Police gave no details about the victims or the circumstances of Thursday’s gunfire in the Czech Republic’s capital.

They say officers were deployed due to a shooting at a school in Jan Palach Square.

The Philosophical Faculty of Charles University and the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design are located in the area.

More to come…

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