Tag: InternationalNews

{Micro-blogging site suspends the accounts of several prominent members of “alt-right” group.}

Twitter has suspended the accounts of several people associated with the alt-right movement, a loosely organised far-right group that espouses white nationalism and has shown strong support for US president-elect Donald Trump.

Richard Spencer, the head of the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank that has advocated for African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics, Jews and Muslims to be removed from the US, said his personal Twitter account and accounts for his institute and his magazine were all suspended this week without notification.

Spencer, who is credited with popularising the term “alt-right,” called the suspensions a coordinated attack against users with certain viewpoints.

“This is 2016 and we live in a digital world,” Spencer was quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying. “Twitter is how the president releases press releases and it’s also how teenage girls talk about Justin Bieber.

“Twitter is not just some website. It’s a public space and we have to treat it that way.”

Pax Dickinson, who was ousted as chief technology officer of the website Business Insider in 2013 for sending offensive tweets, says he also wasn’t given a reason for his Twitter suspension. But he says it likely stemmed from a tweet he sent director Joss Whedon that included an anti-gay slur.

Dickinson says he’s appealed the suspension, but has yet to hear back from Twitter

The Twitter accounts of alt-right personalities Paul Town, Ricky Vaughn and John Rivers also were suspended as of Wednesday.

The social website declined comment, but noted that its policies forbid violent threats, hate speech or harassment and promise to take action against violators.

{Foreign ministry announces new services, including consular support, passport processing and 24-hour legal advice.}

Authorities in Mexico have unveiled new measures to provide support to Mexican citizens living in the United States, including phone hotlines, following Donald Trump’s win in last week’s US presidential election.

Trump, who has promised to build a wall along the US-Mexican border with Mexico paying for it, has also vowed to crack down on undocumented immigrants in the country.

Acting to help Mexicans avoid “abuses and fraud” in the US, Mexico’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday it will expand the availability of mobile consulate services to reach more migrants in their communities.

It will also establish a 24-hour telephone line for questions about immigration, and provide more appointments for migrants to get passports, birth certificates and consular identification cards.

The ministry said Mexico will “strengthen dialogue” with state and local authorities in the US to protect its citizens, adding that migrants in the US should “avoid any conflict situation” and stay out of trouble with the law.

The news comes as Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador agreed to join forces and seek support from Mexico to forge a joint strategy in response to Trump, El Salvador’s foreign minister told Reuters on Wednesday.

Aside from Mexico, many of the Latin America migrants bound for the US hail from the poor nations of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

On Wednesday, the day after a regional meeting in Honduras, the three countries released a joint statement asking their respective foreign ministries to team up and formulate positions on jobs, investment and migration to deal with the new US administration together – though the statement did not refer to Mexico.

The first meeting between the Central American foreign ministers will take place on Thursday in San Salvador, sources said, adding that there is no date yet for when Mexico might join.

{{Threat of deportation}}

Trump, who takes office on January 20, said in an interview with the CBS program “60 Minutes” that aired on Sunday that his administration would focus on deporting immigrants with criminal records.

The president-elect said during the campaign he would deport the estimated 11 million immigrants in the US illegally.

Before the vote, Trump also accused Mexico of sending rapists and drug runners into the US and threatened to rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico.

Trump’s surprise victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton has shaken Mexico, pushing the beleaguered peso to record lows and forcing the government into crisis mode as it seeks to protect bilateral trade.

{Indian leaders roll red carpet for Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, amid criticism over Tel Aviv’s “apartheid” regime.}

A group of Indian activists has denounced Israel’s “undemocratic and exclusionary regime of apartheid” towards Palestine, as India welcomed Israeli President Reuven Rivlin for a weeklong state visit.

“India’s economic linkage with Israel, channels our public money through military deals to Israeli arms companies that transform these funds in to lethal military technology applied in the oppression, colonisation and ethnic cleansing, of the Palestinian people,” the group of 70 individuals and 30 organisations said.

“We are shocked that Israel, with its lawless conduct has emerged as role model for the Indian nation-state, born in the struggle against colonialism and committed to peaceful relations in the neighbourhood.”

The criticism coincided with a welcome speech given by Indian President Shri Pranab Mukherjee in a state dinner hosted for Rivlin on Tuesday.

Mukherjee said India admires “the people of Israel for all that you have accomplished”, according to a transcript of his speech released on Wednesday.

“We both have remained firmly committed to democratic values and continue to strive for our common goals of global security and peace,” he said.

Rivlin is the first Israeli president to visit India in 20 years, and it comes as the two countries celebrate 25 years of diplomatic relations.

Kashmir and Palestine: The story of two occupations

The group of activists also warned against Indian Prime Minister Naredra Modi’s reported visit to Israel, saying “there is nothing to celebrate” about the relationship, “neither for the Palestinian people now for Indian citizens who cherish human rights, democracy and peace.”

The group said that Israel is “using” the Indian market and tax money “to finance its crimes and to promote world views built on walls, wars, and exclusion.”

‘Defence deals’

On Tuesday, the two countries announced they are expanding cooperation particularly in the defence sector.

Earlier, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Rivlin’s trip would give a “crucial push” to bilateral ties.

India has purchased an estimated $12bn worth of defence equipment from Israel over the past decade, making it the third-largest supplier to India after Russia and the United States.

India and Israel had also decided to intensify cooperation in fighting terrorism and boosting trade and investment, Modi said.

Meanwhile, Rivlin said his visit “will help the ties and the cooperation between the two countries.”

Rivlin is accompanied by delegations of businessmen and academics for his weeklong visit.

{The Indian government’s move to withdraw high-value banknotes from circulation is taking a toll on the country’s poor.}

Endless lines outside banks have become the norm in India, as millions of people queue to deposit or exchange the 500 and 1,000 rupee notes that since last week have become officially worthless.

For India’s poor, however, the country’s new currency policy is more than just an inconvenience.

“We don’t have anything to eat in our house,” Manjula Begum, a waste picker who lives on the edge of a New Delhi slum, told Al Jazeera.

“The kids want rice for lunch, but I can’t give it to them. What will I do? Who do I ask for money? No one is helping us.”

The notes’ sudden withdrawal from circulation, a measure aimed at fighting corruption, has caused chaos, with markets, petrol stations and other retailers refusing to accept the larger notes and bank cash machines staying closed.

The Indian government is asking people to be patient with what it calls the “short-term inconvenience” of the new currency policy, but the situation is taking its toll on people living off meagre daily wages.

Most of the India’s poor do not have proper IDs to exchange the notes that they have, or even the time to stand in line in front of a bank for hours.

So, all they can do is to wait.

Inside Story – Will India’s crackdown on high-value banknotes stop corruption?
Another waste picker told Al Jazeera that he feels like the government is “squeezing” people like him.

“We can’t even live our lives right now,” he said.

“Most people have old currency notes at home but can’t exchange them.

“No one is paying us salary either; they’re paying us with the old currency. What will we do with the old notes? The government is really squeezing us.”

Some opposition MPs on Wednesday marched to the President’s home, demanding a roll back on the currency plan, saying it has crippled the daily lives of hundreds of millions in the country.

“People are in utter distress, especially the informal sector is totally disrupted. Poor people, daily wage earners, they’re all facing difficulty,” Saugata Roy, an MP from the opposition Trinamool Congress Party, said.

So far, the government is standing by its decision, saying the new policy will root out counterfeit money and prevent corruption.

It says the currency change will be beneficial for the whole country, including the poor, in the long term.

But the poor feel like the are paying the price for the corruption of the rich, as the money they worked hard for remains worthless.

{Two pro-independence MPs were disqualified from taking office after their oaths of allegiance were considered invalid.}

A Hong Kong court has disqualified two pro-independence members of parliament from taking office, ruling their oath of allegiance invalid.

Tuesday’s ruling was in step with Beijing, which last week intervened in the city’s legal system after street protests.

Beijing ruled that Hong Kong legislators must swear allegiance to Hong Kong as part of China, adding that candidates who take the oath of office in an insincere manner will be disqualified and not given another chance to swear in.

Democratically-elected legislators Yau Wai-ching, 25, and Baggio Leung, 30, sparked controversy when they displayed a banner declaring “Hong Kong is not China” and substituted derogatory terms for “China” while taking their oaths last month.

Al Jazeera’s Sarah Clarke, reporting from Hong Kong, called the Beijing court’s intervention in the matter last week “extraordinary”, since it “was in clear contravention of Hong Kong’s basic laws”.

Protesters throughout Hong Kong have since mobilised against that decision.

“The Beijing court decision pre-empted any kind of high court or judicial decision [in Hong Kong],” Clarke reported. “Interestingly enough, however, the [Hong Kong] judge made no reference to China’s intervention last week.”

The disqualified MPs will now have to decide whether they will try to appeal the decision in the courts.

Meanwhile, many await anxiously to see if the other pro-independence MPs now in the legislator are targeted.

According to Clarke, these dozen or so MPs may be targeted on the grounds that their oaths were questionable.

“If they are targeted, then this could be a huge setback for the pro-democracy movement who are now part of the legislative chamber,” Clarke said.

{Suicide attacks kill at least 14 south and west of Baghdad, as Iraqi forces’ push to retake Mosul makes slow progress.}

ISIL fighters in Iraq launched a series of suicide bomb attacks in the city of Fallujah and an oasis town south of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 14 people and wounding dozens.

The attacks came as Iraqi forces and their allies continue fighting ISIL in the northern city of Mosul, the armed group’s last major population centre in the country.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has carried out several attacks in other areas of Iraq since the operation to retake Mosul was launched a month ago, in an apparent bid to draw attention and possibly troops away from the battle for the city.

In Fallujah, at least eight people were killed and nearly 20 wounded in two separate car bomb blasts that hit police checkpoints, police sources told Reuters news agency.

The attacks were the first since Iraqi forces took back the city from ISIL, also known as ISIS, in June.

“These two explosions are the first … in Fallujah since its liberation,” said Raja Barakat, a member of the provincial council security committee in Anbar province, where Fallujah is located.

Earlier on Monday, a group of ISIL attackers armed with suicide vests and light weapons killed at least eight people in Ain al-Tamer, 50km from a Shia shrine in the city of Karbala, before blowing themselves, according to local officials.

The attack involved six suicide bombers who were detected by security forces before a major gathering in the area that is expected to draw tens of thousands of pilgrims.

Masum al-Tamimi, a member of the Karbala provincial council, said the attackers tried to infiltrate the town in the early hours before withdrawing to the al-Jihad area after clashing with security forces, where they detonated their explosives. He put the death toll at eight.

The interior ministry issued a statement on the attack, saying five of the bombers were killed by security forces while the sixth detonated explosives inside a house. The ministry put the death toll at six.

ISIL’s online statement put the number of the suicide bombers at five, saying they clashed for hours with the security forces and set off their explosives consecutively when they ran out of ammunition.

Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Jamjoom, reporting from Erbil, said the attackers were dressed as pilgrims trying to pass the checkpoint to enter the village.

“The policemen were suspicious of these bombers when they tried to enter the checkpoint. They detonated their explosive once the policemen opened fire at them,” Jamjoom said.

“The attack just underlines how volatile Iraq is, and not just Mosul, but other parts of the country as well where ISIL is regularly carrying out attacks.”

Attacks in southern Iraq are rare, especially compared with the frequent bombings that hit Baghdad.

But Ain al-Tamer, which is 50km from the Shia holy city of Karbala, is on the edge of Anbar province, which has long been a haven for al-Qaeda in Iraq – and now ISIL.

The group overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes have since regained much of the territory.

Iraqi government forces, supported by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shia militias, as well as air and ground support from the US-led coalition, are now fighting to retake Mosul.

But ISIL fighters are putting up stiff resistance, while the group has been able to retain its ability to strike inside government-held territory with bombings and other attacks as it loses ground.

The offensive on Mosul entered its fifth week on Monday, with Iraqi government forces still trying to consolidate gains made in the eastern edge of the city that they breached end of October.

They are yet to cross into the northern and southern limits of Mosul, where more than a million people are thought to be still living.

Separately, a mixed Kurdish and Yazidi armed force known as the Sinjar Resistance Unit said on Monday it had dislodged ISIL fighters from five Yazidi villages west of Mosul in an advance that began on Saturday.

{Controversial autopsies on former president Lech Kaczynski, among 80 others, aims to determine cause of 2010 crash.
}

{The bodies of former Polish president Lech Kaczynski and his wife will be removed from their tomb in Krakow, the first of more than 80 exhumations planned on prominent Poles killed in a plane crash in Russia in 2010.}

Exhumations scheduled for after dark on Monday are part of a new investigation into the crash ordered by Poland’s conservative ruling party, Law and Justice, which is led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the late president’s twin brother.

Post mortem examinations will be carried out to determine the cause of the death and of the crash, identify all the remains, and check for explosives – since some of Kaczynski’s followers believe a planned blast downed the aircraft, killing all 96 aboard.

Kaczynski has cast doubt on earlier investigations – carried out by both Poland and Russia – which concluded that the crash was an accident caused primarily by bad weather and pilot error.

“There will not be a free Poland, a truly free Poland, without the truth, without a proper honouring of those who died, without a closure of this case, which has cast such a long shadow on our national and social life,” Kaczynski said last week.

‘Cruel act’

The exhumations are proving controversial with most Poles dismissive of conspiracy theories, and some relatives aghast at the thought of their loved ones being exhumed.

“We stand alone and helpless in the face of this ruthless and cruel act,” the relatives of 17 victims wrote in an open letter.

“The forceful exhumations constitute a violation of a taboo existing in our culture that calls for the respect of the bodies of the dead,” said Malgorzata Rybicka, the widow of Arkadiusz Rybicki, a politician with Civic Platform, in an interview with the Tygodnik Powszechny magazine.

“It also shows the light-hearted approach to the feelings of the families.”

However, Malgorzata Wassermann – daughter of Zbigniew Wassermann, a politician who died – called the exhumations “a procedural must” given that Poland carried out no autopsies, as the stunned nation watched the dozens of coffins, draped in white-and-red national flags, arrive from Russia in 2010.

The Russian autopsy report on her father described him as having the healthy liver of a young man, when in fact the 60-year-old had only part of his liver left after an operation.

The tragedy occurred on April 10, 2010, when the presidential delegation was travelling to honour 22,000 Polish officers who were murdered by the Soviet secret police at the start of World War II in the Katyn forest and elsewhere.

The delegation included government members, politicians, military commanders and the relatives of officers killed in the wartime massacre.

The symbolism of the mission only added to the national grief and the suspicions.

{Proposed legislation allowing confiscation of private land and silencing of mosque “noise” could lead to “catastrophe”.}

Palestinian leaders on Monday denounced controversial Israeli draft bills – one authorising illegal settlements, the other silencing calls to prayer – threatening to take the issues to the United Nations Security Council.

A committee of Israeli ministers adopted the two bills on Sunday, though they must still be approved by parliament.

“The recent Israeli measures are going to lead to catastrophe in the region,” said Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

“The Palestinian leadership will turn to the UN Security Council and all other international organisations to stop those Israeli measures.”

On the bill allowing the government to order the confiscation of privately owned Palestinian land, Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki accused Israel of seeking to “impose facts on the ground and create new realities by legalising the illegal actions that it commits”.

The international community considers all Israeli settlements in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank to be illegal – whether they are authorised by the government or not.

Palestinians also sharply criticised a separate bill that would limit the volume of calls to prayer at mosques in Israel and Jerusalem.

Government watchdogs have called that proposal a threat to freedom of religion – and a provocation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had received complaints “from all parts of Israeli society, from all religions” about “the excessive noise” coming from the loudspeakers that transmit the prayers.

While the draft bill applies to all houses of worship, it is seen as specifically targeting mosques.

“There happens to be one religion that does, if you will, disturb the peace a little bit more than some of the others. But this bill is written for everyone,” Jeremy Saltan, of the Jewish Home Party, told Al Jazeera.

Sheikh Omar Kiswani, director of al-Aqsa Mosque, said the move against the call to prayer was unacceptable.

“The occupying power should not intervene in our religious culture,” he told Al Jazeera.

“The bill violates international and religious laws. The occupation is not just provoking Muslims in Jerusalem but around the world.”

{President-elect picks Washington insider and controversial right-wing media figure as top advisers.}

US president-elect Donald Trump made his first two key appointments on Sunday, one an overture to Republican inner circles and the other a shot across the bow of the Washington DC establishment.

Trump named GOP chief Reince Priebus as his chief of staff, and tapped right-wing Breitbart news executive Stephen Bannon as chief strategist and senior counselor.

The two men had made up Trump’s chief of staff shortlist, and while Priebus got that job, Bannon’s post is expected to have significant clout. The media executive with ties to the white nationalist movement was given top billing in the statement announcing their appointments.

Priebus, who tied the RNC to Trump this summer despite some intra-party objections, is a GOP operative with deep expertise of the Washington establishment that Trump has vowed to shake up. He also has close ties to House Speaker Paul Ryan.

“I am very grateful to the president-elect for this opportunity to serve him and this nation as we work to create an economy that works for everyone, secure our borders, repeal and replace Obamacare and destroy radical Islamic terrorism,” Priebus said in the statement.

Bannon, meanwhile, helped transform the Breitbart news site into the leading mouthpiece of the party’s anti-establishment wing, which helped fuel Trump’s political rise. Ryan has been one of his most frequent targets.

In announcing the appointments, Trump said Priebus and Bannon would work as “equal partners” – effectively creating two power centers in the West Wing. The arrangement is risky and could leave ambiguity over who makes final decisions.

Priebus is a traditional choice, one meant as an olive branch to the Republicans who control both houses of Congress as Trump looks to pass his legislative agenda.

Ryan tweeted, “I’m very proud and excited for my friend @Reince. Congrats!”

Ryan made no mention of Bannon in that tweet, but earlier told CNN that he didn’t know Bannon but “I trust Donald’s judgment.”

The Bannon pick, however, is anything but safe.

Under Bannon’s tenure, Brietbart pushed a nationalist agenda and became one of the leading outlets of the so-called alt-right – a movement often associated with white supremacist ideas that oppose multiculturalism and defend “Western values.”

John Weaver, a Republican strategist who worked for Ohio Governor John Kasich’s presidential campaign, tweeted: “The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office. Be very vigilant, America.”

Bannon, who became Trump’s campaign CEO in August, pushed him to adopt more populist rhetoric and paint rival Hillary Clinton as part of a global conspiracy made up of the political, financial and media elite, bankers bent on oppressing the country’s working people – a message that carried Trump to the White House.

Matthew Del Carlo, a Republican strategist, told Al Jazeera that Trump was building a strong coalition.

“He’s bringing various interests in the Republican party together to get an agenda – and he has a very ambitious agenda – through Congress. He won an historic presidential election not seen since the 1920s where not only did we win the executive branch, we also won both houses…obviously he’s bringing in Reince because he needs the House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has a great relationship with Reince, to push his agenda through.”

Deportation or incarceration

In his first television interview since the election, Trump on Sunday said he planned to immediately deport or jail as many three million immigrants who are in the country illegally.

The interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” gave the first clues as to how the billionaire businessman-turned-politician will govern the country.

Demonstrators in major US cities took to the streets for a fifth straight day to protest his election, raging against campaign promises to restrict Muslim immigration and deport immigrants in the country illegally, as well as allegations that the former reality TV star sexually abused women.

Trump said in the CBS interview that once he takes office he would work to remove immigrants with criminal records who are in the country illegally.

“What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people – probably two million, it could be even three million – we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate,” he said.

During his campaign, Trump said he would deport the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally, most of whom are Hispanic, and said Mexico was sending criminals and rapists into the US