Tag: InternationalNews

{Samsung Electronics suspends production of the smartphone a month after recall over explosive batteries, reports say.}

Samsung Electronics has temporarily suspended production of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones following reports of fires in replacement devices, according to South Korean media.

Monday’s move is a further setback for the technology giant in the midst of its worst ever phone recall crisis.

“[Samsung] still hasn’t confirmed that it has definitely halted production of the Galaxy Note 7 but it has released a statement for the first time today, Monday, in the last hour or so, saying that it is ‘temporarily adjusting the Galaxy Note 7 schedule to take further steps to ensure quality and safety matters’,” Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett said, reporting from Seoul.

The Yonhap News Agency reported that Samsung’s decision to halt Note 7 production was done in cooperation with authorities in China and the US, citing an unnamed source at a Samsung partner company.

“If the Note 7 is allowed to continue it could lead to the single greatest act of brand self-destruction in the history of modern technology,” Eric Schiffer, brand strategy expert and chairman of Reputation Management Consultants, told Reuters news agency.

“Samsung should arrest the sale of Note 7’s and protect the safety of their clients before profits and ultimately as a byproduct protect Samsung. Samsung needs to take a giant write-down and cast the Note 7 to the engineering hall of shame next to the Ford Pinto.”

On Sunday, US telecommunications firm AT&T and German rival T-Mobile said they would halt exchanges of recalled Samsung Galaxy Note 7s pending further investigations.

The announcement saw Samsung’s share price plunge by as much as four percent in early morning trade on Monday – even before the Yonhap report came out.

{{Shares fall}}

At midday, Samsung shares were trading at 1.65 million won – down 3.2 percent from Friday’s close.

AT&T said it would still offer customers the option to exchange Galaxy Note 7s for another Samsung smartphone or another device of their choice.

T-Mobile said it was halting sales of the smartphone, as well as the exchanges.

Australia’s largest carrier, Telstra Corp, said Samsung had paused supply of new Note 7s to the company.

“Analysts are saying [the recall] coud cost between two and five billion dollars, and that was even before this latest development,” said Fawcett, adding that some 2.5 million phones worldwide would need to be replaced.

Major airlines and airport authorities again urged passengers to stop using the phone on board.

“In light of recent incidents and concerns raised about Samsung Galaxy Note 7 devices, passengers are strongly advised not to turn on or charge these devices on board aircraft and not to stow them in any checked baggage,” Hong Kong International Airport said on its website on Monday.

Singapore Airlines also said on Monday the powering up and charging of Note 7s is prohibited on all its flights.

{At least one Indian soldier wounded as suspected rebels lay siege to government office in Indian-administered Kashmir.}

Indian police say security forces are battling a group of gunmen inside a government compound in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir.

Police told the Associated Press news agency on Monday that army and paramilitary soldiers cordoned off the compound after gunshots were heard near Pampore town, about 10km outside of Srinagar, capital of Indian Kashmir.

One soldier was reported wounded in the initial fighting.

Sources told Al Jazeera that at least two suspected rebels are holed up inside the Entrepreneurship Development Institute, and that intermittent shooting could be heard in the building.

The attack comes as Kashmir is experiencing its largest protests against Indian rule in recent years, sparked by the killing in July of a popular rebel commander by Indian soldiers.

The protests, and a sweeping military crackdown, have all but paralysed life in Indian-controlled Kashmir, with shops, schools and most banks remaining shut and mobile phone and internet services working intermittently.

Kashmir has been divided between rivals India and Pakistan since the end of British rule in 1947. Both claim the territory in full.

Anti-India sentiment runs deep in Kashmir, where rebel groups have fought Indian troops since 1989 for either independence or a merger with Pakistan. More than 70,000 people have been killed since then.

Tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours has soared after an armed attack last month on an Indian army base killed 19 soldiers with the two armies exchanging heavy fire and mortars across their de facto border in Kashmir almost every day.

{Russia vetoes French draft urging end to military flights over Aleppo while Russian draft fails to gather enough votes.}

Western governments and Russia have clashed at the UN Security Council even while the Syrian government presses ahead with its military offensive against rebel-held areas of Aleppo.

The UN Security Council voted on Saturday on two rival resolutions on the fighting, one drafted by France calling for an end to air strikes and a second by Russia that urged a ceasefire but made no mention of halting the bombings.

Russia vetoed the French-drafted resolution that would have demanded an immediate end to air strikes and military flights over Syria’s second largest city and for a truce along with humanitarian aid access throughout the country.

It is the fifth time Russia has vetoed a UN resolution on Syria during the more than five-year conflict.

The previous four times Russia was backed by China, but on Saturday China abstained from the vote.

Eleven of the 15 council members voted in favour of the draft resolution.

A UN resolution needs nine votes in favour and no vetoes to be adopted. The veto powers are the US, France, Britain, Russia and China.

After Russia’s veto, the council moved to the second vote on the Russian-drafted text, but it failed to gather enough votes to pass.

“It was a day of high drama at the Security Council,” said James Bays, Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York.

“The Russian ambassador called it a ‘spectacle’. He said, ‘no one wins and we need to go back to diplomacy’.

“But certainly some ambassadors were pointing the finger at Russia because the first resolution that was proposed by France, which suggested that all military aircraft over Aleppo should be grounded, would have gone through if it wasn’t for the Russian veto.”

After Russia’s proposal failed to gather enough votes, Matthew Rycroft, Britain’s ambassador to the UN, asked Russia to, “stop bombing Aleppo now”.

“It [the Russian proposal] failed because it failed to demand an immediate end to the aerial bombardment of Aleppo,” he said.

“It’s a sham. Just as Russia’s hollow commitment to a political process in Syria is a sham. The indiscrimiunate bombing of civilians in Aleppo is sickening and barbaric. Please stop now.”

In response to Rycroft’s comments, Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, said “the UK should stop supporting terrorists instead”.

“Stop supporting all the villans across the world including terrorists,” he said.

“Stop interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign states. Stop your colonial habits. Leave the world in peace and then maybe, things will improve in many areas and regions of the world.”

In the run-up to the votes, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s foreign minister, said the mounting tensions between the US and Russia had created a situation “more dangerous” than the Cold War.

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, has made clear his anger at the Syrian army’s Russian-backed assault on Aleppo, saying that its bombing of civilians could amount to a war crime.

Syria has made significant advances in its renewed two-week-old offensive in Aleppo, seizing territory to the north and pushing back the front line in the city centre.

The front line had remained largely static since the rebels captured the eastern districts in 2012.

Since the government’s offensive began on September 22, a few days after a joint US-Russia-brokered ceasefire collapsed, at least 290 people – mostly civilians – have been killed in rebel-held areas, 57 of them children, says the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) monitoring group.

And 50 civilians, including nine children, have been killed in rebel shelling on government-held areas of the city, according to the SOHR, which relies on a network of sources on the ground.

It said government forces were making further advances on Saturday in the lead-up to the Security Council session.

The SOHR reported heavy air strikes on the rebel-held Fardos and Sukari neighbourhoods.

The assault by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces has led to a global outcry after air strikes on hospitals and a UN aid convoy.

The offensive has also elicited a warning from Staffan de Mistura, the UN envoy, that eastern Aleppo could be “totally destroyed” by the year’s end.

Council members held negotiations during the past week on the French proposal for an end to the bombing of Aleppo, access for aid deliveries and a ban on military flights over the city.

Churkin said the French measure was “hastily put together” and suggested it was “not designed to make progress … but to cause a Russian veto.

“I cannot possibly see how we can let this resolution pass”.

{Funeral reception, attended by military and intelligence officials of Houthi led-government, targeted in Sanaa.}

At least 140 people were killed and more than 500 wounded in several air strikes on a funeral reception in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, according to health officials.

Saba news agency, which is aligned with the Iran-allied Houthi group, accused an Arab coalition fighter jet of striking the grand hall of ceremonies on al-Khamseen Street on Saturday afternoon.

Hundreds of mourners had gathered in the hall to take part in a funeral ceremony.

The United Nations released a statement saying the UN humanitarian coordinator and the NGO community in Yemen were outraged and shocked by the air strikes.

“Initial reports from health officials in Sanaa indicate over 140 people were killed and over 525 injured,” OCHA said in the statement.

The death toll was one of the largest in any single incident since the Arab alliance began military operations to try to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power following his ousting by the Houthis in March 2015.

Coalition denies role

However, sources in the alliance denied that there was an Arab coalition role in the strikes.

“Absolutely no such operation took place at that target,” one of the sources told Reuters news agency, citing what he described as confirmation from the coalition air force command.

“The coalition is aware of such reports and is certain that it is possible that other causes of bombing are to be considered. The coalition has in the past avoided such gatherings and (they) never been a subject of targets.”

Hakim al-Masmari, the editor of the Yemen Post, told Al Jazeera the venue in Sanaa was hit by four strikes.

“Initially two, then after the plane circled around, a further two. The planes were heard and seen in the skies by multiple people.

“Senior intelligence and military officials were present, and Sanaa’s mayor Abdul-Qader Hilal was confirmed killed,” al-Masmari said.

The Arab coalition, assembled by Saudi Arabia, has been providing air support for Hadi’s forces in a civil war that has killed more than 10,000 people since March 2015 and displaced more than three million.

Fighting has intensified since August when UN-sponsored peace talks in Kuwait ended without an agreement.

Saba cited a security source as saying that the strikes occurred as the funeral reception was under way for the father of Brigadier Jalal al-Ruweishan, interior minister in the self-proclaimed Houthi government.

The source said Ruweishan was present at the event. It is not clear whether he survived the attack.

The strikes caused a large fire at the grand hall, which was largely destroyed, said the Sabaa report.

Haykal Bafana, a Yemeni analyst based in Sanaa, told Al Jazeera that four missiles were used in the attack.

“I watched the air strikes, which took place barely 1.5km from my house. They first used a normal missile, that pierced the roof. The second was an incendiary missile, burning the whole inside of the hall.

“The third was a missile on first responders,” Bafana said.

He also said that military officials in attendance were the possible targets.

“Ali Abdullah Saleh hardly ever attends funerals. I think Jalal al-Ruwaishan was the target. It was his father Sheikh Ali’s funeral.”

Ruweishan had sided with the Houthi movement when President Hadi fled Yemen after the Houthis advanced on his headquarters in the southern port city of Aden in March 2015.

The Saudi-led coalition had been blamed for several attacks on medical centres, including some run by international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), schools, factories and homes in the past 18 months that has killed scores of civilians.

In August, MSF said it was evacuating its staff from six hospitals in northern Yemen after a coalition air strike hit a health facility operated by the group killing 19 people.

The coalition, which says it does not target civilians, has expressed deep regret over the decision and said it was trying to set up “urgent meetings” with the medical aid group.

{{Civil war }}

The conflict between Yemen’s government and the Houthi rebels escalated in 2015 with the intervention of an Arab coalition in support of Hadi.

The UN says more than three million people have been displaced by fighting in Yemen since March 2015.

According to UNICEF, nearly three million people in Yemen are in need of immediate food supplies, while 1.5 million children suffer malnutrition, including 370,000 enduring very severe malnutrition that weakens their immune system.

Yemen has also been hit by a cholera outbreak , the UN has warned, saying it poses a further threat to children in the impoverished country.

{Fears of cholera outbreak and food shortages as Caribbean nation’s crops are wiped out by Hurricane Matthew.}

The full scale of the devastation in rural parts of storm-hit Haiti became clear as the death toll soared to nearly 900 three days after Hurricane Matthew levelled huge swaths of the country’s south.

As Matthew threatened the US coast on Saturday, US President Barack Obama urged Americans to mobilise in support of Haiti, where a million people were in need of assistance after the latest disaster to strike the western hemisphere’s poorest nation.

The number of deaths in Haiti surged to at least 877 late on Friday as information trickled in from remote areas previously cut off by the storm, according to a Reuters tally of death tolls given by officials. Authorities expect the figure to rise even further.

While the capital and biggest city, Port-au-Prince, was largely spared, the south suffered devastation.

Aerial footage from the hardest-hit towns showed a ruined landscape of metal shanties with roofs blown away and downed trees everywhere. Brown mud from overflowing rivers covered the ground.

Herve Fourcand, a senator for the Sud department, which felt the full force of Matthew’s impact, said several localities were still cut off by flooding and mudslides.

A scene of desolation greeted visitors to Jeremie, a town of 30,000 people left inaccessible until Friday.

“Thousands of houses have been destroyed, and there is not enough food and drinking water,” Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo, reporting from a Jeremie, said.

At one of the town’s poorly-equipped medical centres, doctors said they are desperate for help.

“We don’t have anything; no bandages, no penicillin,” Dr Dessous, of the Saint Antoine hospital, told Al Jazeera. ” We had to sent people home because we couldn’t treat them here.”

{{Cholera threat
}}

But it’s not just the lack of medicine and equipment threatening Jeremie’s hurricane-hit residents – disease is also a major hazard for the people living here.

“One of the biggest fears here is the threat of cholera,” said Al Jazeera’s Bo, citing a cholera epidemic introduced by UN peacekeepers following Haiti’s 2010 devastating earthquake.

“Thousands of people have previously died because of this disease.”

In one ward, at least 12 patients had cholera, five of them children.

The Pan American Health Organization said on Thursday it was preparing for a possible cholera surge in Haiti after the hurricane because the flooding was likely to contaminate water supplies.

Residents of the town were also concerned about their crops, levelled by Matthew’s heavy rain and winds.

“We already didn’t have enough food, now we have lost our crops,” Junot Clerveau told Al Jazeera. “We have lost our trees that give us mangoes and coconuts. I don’t know how we’re going to deal with this.”

Haiti in crisis after Hurricane Matthew hits
On the aid effort, Mourad Wahba, of the UN Mission in Haiti, told Al Jazeera: “We would like the Hatian government to be the coordinating authority. We don’t want to repeat the experience of confusion of 2010 .”

The Caribbean nation was struck by its strongest earthquake in more than 200 years six years ago, causing a catastrophe and killing more than 220,000 people. Back then, political wrangling stalled reconstruction efforts.

{{‘Doing our best’}}

With power lines down in Haiti, people were cut off from the news for days since the storm struck on Tuesday – and had yet to hear that a presidential election due to take place this weekend had been postponed.

Virtually all of Jeremie’s corrugated-iron homes have been destroyed, with only a few concrete buildings left standing.

“It was as if someone had a remote control and just kept turning the wind up higher and higher,” said Carmine Luc, a 22-year-old woman, told AFP news agency.

“When the roof of my house blew off, I clung to a wall with my left hand, and with my right, I held on with all my strength to my three-year-old child – who was screaming.”

READ MORE: UN admits role in deadly Haiti cholera outbreak

A ship carrying nine containers of food and medical supplies was headed for Dame Marie, further west in Grand’Anse department.

“It’s probably the hardest hit department and the conditions don’t allow for a helicopter to land there,” Interior Minister Francois Anick Joseph told AFP. “So we’re doing our best to help those affected.”

Convoys were headed to other affected areas by land, sea and air, he said, including two helicopters provided by the US military to transport 50 tonnes of water, food and medicine elsewhere in Grand’Anse.

{{‘Nothing left’}}

Further south, Haiti’s third-largest town of Les Cayes was also battered, its Sous-Roches district turned from a quiet beachfront neighbourhood to a chaos of mud and shattered trees.

The river level has started to drop, but its waters are still mixed with the storm surge that inundated the beach during the Category Four hurricane’s hours-long assault on Tuesday.

“I thought I was going to die. I looked death in the face,” said 36-year-old Yolette Cazenor, standing in front of a house smashed in two by a fallen coconut palm tree.

Over 10 hours, hurricane-force wind blasts and heavy rain leveled all the crops in the community’s fields, promising lean months ahead even by Haiti’s impoverished standards.

Up to 80 percent of crops have been lost in some areas, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Around one million people are in need of urgent assistance, according to CARE France, a humanitarian group.

“They have nothing left except the clothes on their back,” it said.

US: Millions evacuate as Hurricane Matthew hits Florida
As the death toll climbed, pledges of aid flooded in, with the US announcing it was sending a Navy ship, the USS Mesa Verde, whose 300 Marines will add to the 250 personnel and nine helicopters already deployed to Haiti.

France announced it was sending 60 troops, with 32 tonnes of humanitarian supplies and water purification equipment.

Obama also urged Americans to send in donations for Haiti’s hurricane victims.

“We know that hundreds of people have lost their lives and that there’s been severe property damage and they’re going to need help rebuilding,” he said.

“Even the smallest contribution can really make a big difference.”

Venezuela, in an economic crisis itself, swiftly sent three loads of relief supplies and food. They included water, medicine, tents, mattresses, blankets and machinery to move rubble, its Interior Minister Nestor Reverol said.

Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York state, home to a large Haitian community, said it was time for people to open their hearts to those in need.

“We ask New Yorkers to unite and stand together to support relief efforts,” he said.

{{Haitians skeptical}}

Haiti, which sits on a hurricane path, has had its fair share of natural disasters, including 2010’s devastating earthquake that demolished much of the capital.

Some of its needs have been met by international aid.

But the large-scale international aid programs in place since the quake have also been criticised for failing to build local capacity while spending millions on their own short-term programmes.

So Joseph, the interior minister, insisted that “it’s out of the question for NGOs to take charge of humanitarian aid”.

“We are very firm on this point: this country is led by a government. Across the country, it’s civil protection services that are coordinating everything,” he added.

“We are not going to turn this country into a messy chaos. It’s not going to happen. We already experienced that in 2010, we learned from our mistakes, we will act responsibly.”

Many ordinary Haitians are skeptical of help from abroad – in a country whose economic decrepitude is seen as connected to its disastrous post-colonial legacy of foreign intervention and home-grown corruption.

“I’ve never believed in foreign aid,” said Gedeon Dorfeuille, a resident of Les Cayes. “Please, don’t come back promising us billions again if nothing is to come of it.”

{The Foreign Office has told the LSE that non-UK academics should not do advisory work for the government on Brexit.}

One of Britain’s most prestigious universities has accused the government of barring leading academics from acting as advisers on Brexit because they are not UK citizens.

The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) said it was told by the Foreign Office that non-British nationals were not allowed to work on projects about leaving the EU.

Sara Hagemann, one of nine LSE experts who have already been advising the UK government about Brexit, has revealed via social media that she has been summarily dropped as a government adviser.

She said the Foreign Office dropped her as an expert adviser on the grounds of her Danish nationality.

The LSE said in a statement that they believe their academics, including non-UK nationals, “have hugely valuable expertise which will be vital in this time of uncertainty around the UK’s relationship with Europe and the rest of the world.”

The public statement was followed by an internal email to staff, saying: “We will continue to stand by our colleagues and we strongly value the work you all do.”

“The government’s decision has been criticised as ‘baffling’, ‘disrespectful’ and ‘xenophobic’,” said Al Jazeera’s Paul Brennan, reporting from London.

“And it is particularly strange since less than a month ago, Dr Sara Hagemann was one of three LSE experts asked to give a detailed media briefing on Brexit – the organiser of that briefing was the UK Foreign Office.”

The Foreign Office, on the other hand, has denied the claims, saying that the university has misunderstood its guidance and that it has not changed its policy.

“It has always been the case that anyone working in the Foreign Office may require security clearance … Britain is an outward looking nation and we will continue to take advice from the best and brightest minds regardless of nationality,” it said in a statement.

Steve Peers, a professor of EU law, told Al Jazeera that he would be more inclined to believe the LSE, because academic institutions are very precise.

“We can’t be absolutely sure but governments and civil servants are in a awkward position politically and they always need to cover themselves if anything embarrassing comes out.

“University administrations, on the other hand, tend to be very precise, when they send the staff an email about their jobs, they try to make sure it is absolutely correct.”

LSE is one of the world’s top universities, which counts financier George Soros, Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger and former US president John Kennedy among its alumni.

With around 9,600 full time students from 140 countries, the LSE is one of Britain’s most internationally diverse universities. It says over 100 languages are spoken on its campus in central London.

The row with LSE added spice to a tumultuous week for British politics which saw Theresa May, the UK prime minister, announce a date for triggering Brexit, a sterling plunge and a senior minister propose firms to disclose what percentage of their workforce was non-British.

“The Foreign Office is explaining it away as a misunderstanding,” said our correspondent.

“Meanwhile the London School of Economics has pledged to stand firm to its principles of academic independence.”

{Staffan de Mistura offers to personally escort rebel fighters out of Aleppo to help save 275,000 trapped civilians.}

The UN’s Syria envoy on Thursday made an impassioned appeal to save eastern Aleppo, warning the city faced total destruction and urging Jabhat Fateh al-Sham fighters to leave the rebel-held east so civilians can get aid.

“In a maximum of two months, two-and-half months, the city of eastern Aleppo may be totally destroyed,” Staffan de Mistura told reporters in Geneva.

The rebel-held east of Aleppo has been hammered by a Russia-backed government offensive, including multiple air attacks on hospitals, with hundreds of civilians killed and thousands wounded.

De Mistura noted the presence of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham in the city has been used as a justification by Moscow and Damascus for the continued assault.

Formerly known as al-Nusra Front, the group recently changed its name following a break with al-Qaeda, but many still see the two groups as tied.

“Can you please look at my eyes,” de Mistura said in a direct appeal to the group’s leaders, before pleading with them to quit Aleppo.

“If you decide to leave with dignity … I am personally ready to physically accompany you,” the UN envoy pledged.

He said history would judge Syria and Russia if they used the presence of about 900 Fateh al-Sham fighters as an “easy alibi” for destroying the rebel-held besieged area, killing thousands of the 275,000 citizens, 100,000 of whom are children.

Aid deliveries to the besieged rebel-held neighbourhoods of Aleppo have been all but impossible since government forces seized the last supply route in July.

{{‘Emergency mode’}}

President Bashar al-Assad said on Thursday that rebels holed up in Aleppo can leave with their families if they lay down their arms, vowing to press on with the assault on Syria’s largest city and recapture full control of the country.

However, rebels said they had no plan to evacuate Aleppo, the last major urban area they control, and denounced the amnesty offer as a deception.

“It’s impossible for the rebel groups to leave Aleppo because this would be a trick by the regime,” Zakaria Malahifji, a Turkey-based official for the Fastaqim group which is present in Aleppo, told Reuters.

“Aleppo is not like other areas, it’s not possible for them to surrender.”

The government also sent text messages to the mobile phones of some of those people trapped in the besieged sector, telling them to repudiate fighters in their midst.

Speaking to Danish television, Assad said he would “continue the fight with the rebels till they leave Aleppo. They have to. There’s no other option.”

On the ground, Syrian government forces seized about half of a key opposition-held neighbourhood in Aleppo on Thursday in a new advance against rebels, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

The British-based group said fighting had been raging in the Bustan al-Basha quarter near the city centre.

“We are in an emergency mode regarding Syria, Aleppo, and the future of the this conflict,” de Mistura said in Geneva.

The UN envoy described the suspension earlier this week of Syria ceasefire talks between Russia and the US as a “serious setback”.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault was expected to push on Thursday for a UN Security Council resolution to bring about a new Syria truce.

Ambassadors of the Security Council were to meet at the French Mission to the UN later on Thursday to discuss the proposed resolution, which “calls for an immediate ceasefire in Aleppo and the grounding of all aircraft over Aleppo”, according to Al Jazeera’s James Bays, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York.

Government troops, with Russian air support and Iranian and militia ground forces, launched an assault to retake all of Aleppo last month after a week-old ceasefire agreed to by Washington and Moscow steadily fell apart.

“The siege has been in place for weeks now. Food and fuel supplies are dwindling … bakeries are closing, there is no running water. According to Oxfam, 1.5 million people on both sides of the city do not have clean running water,” Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Gaziantep along the Syria-Turkey border, said.

But the government and its allies are still pushing ahead with their offensive, retaking territory in the north of rebel-held Aleppo in recent days as opposition fighters stopped a second advance from the south.

The government is demanding that civilians leave the area, “but the only option it has given them is to leave to the western, government-controlled side of Aleppo, and people are afraid”.

As recently as Wednesday night, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham published footage showing fighters training and preparing for battle in Aleppo.

“We still haven’t had a chance to speak to the people of Aleppo and to see whether they accept this … because yes, at the end of the day, the people of Aleppo do not accept and share the ideology of Nusra. But they do feel the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham is the only one really standing up against the government, and it is the strongest force in the ground repelling the government [advance],” Khodr said.

The 900 or so Fateh al-Sham fighters are among the estimated 8,000 rebel fighters left in east Aleppo.

{Number of dead in Haiti rises sharply into the hundreds as Hurricane Matthew leaves behind trail of destruction.}

The number of people killed in Haiti by Hurricane Matthew has risen sharply into the hundreds, as coastal villages and towns began making contact with the outside world two days after being hit by the fiercest Caribbean storm in nearly a decade.

Bodies started to appear late on Thursday as waters receded in some places after Matthew’s 235 kilometres-per-hour winds smashed concrete walls, flattened palm trees and tore roofs off homes, forcing thousands of Haitians to flee.

With the numbers increasing quickly, different government agencies and committees gave contrasting death tolls. Earlier on Thursday, officials had said the number of dead stood at 283, but a later Reuters news agency tally of deaths reported by civil protection officials showed the storm killed at least 339 people.

Most of the fatalities were in towns and fishing villages around the western end of Tiburon peninsula in Haiti’s southwest, with many victims killed by falling trees, flying debris and swollen rivers.

At least 50 people were reported to have died in coastal Roche-a-Bateau, which local officials described as “devastated”.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Louis Paul Raphael, a central government representative in Roche-a-Bateau, told Reuters.

Inland in Chantal, the toll rose to 90 late on Thursday evening, the town’s mayor said.

{{‘Everyone is a victim’}}

In the Sous-Roche district of Les Cayes, Haiti’s third city on its exposed southern coast, residents tried to help their neighbours.

“I’ve been on my feet for two days without sleep. We need to help each other,” Dominique Osny told AFP news agency amid the debris and destruction left when the storm passed through on Tuesday.

“Everyone is a victim here, houses have been washed away, we lost all the roofing. I lost everything, right up to my birth certificate,” he said, citing a vital document hard to replace in Haiti.

“I thought I was going to die. I looked death in the face,” said 36-year-old Yolette Cazenor, standing in front of a house smashed in two by a fallen coconut palm.

Along with the human devastation, the storm killed livestock and destroyed crops in parts of the impoverished nation.

“We have nothing left to survive on. All the crops have gone, all fruit trees are down. I don’t have a clue how this is going to be fixed,” Marc Soniel Noel, the deputy mayor of Chantal, told Reuters.

Matthew is the strongest hurricane in the Caribbean since Felix in 2007 and was closing in on Florida as a Category 4 cyclone, the second strongest on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale.

Four people were killed over the weekend in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

{{Cholera fears}}

The devastation in Haiti prompted authorities to postpone a presidential election scheduled for Sunday.

Poverty, weak government and precarious living conditions for many of its citizens make Haiti particularly vulnerable to natural disasters.

In 2010, a magnitude 7 earthquake wrecked the capital, Port-au-Prince, killing more than 200,000 people.

Following the earthquake, UN peacekeepers inadvertently introduced cholera to the country, killing at least 9,000 and infecting hundreds of thousands more.

The Pan American Health Organization said on Thursday it was preparing for a possible cholera surge in Haiti after the hurricane because the flooding was likely to contaminate water supplies.

{{Millions flee in US}}

Carrying extremely dangerous winds of 220km/h, Matthew pounded the northwestern part of the Bahamas as it barrelled towards the southeast US coast where millions of residents heeded warnings to flee inland.

Matthew’s top sustained winds had dropped to 209km/h by Thursday night.

But it remained a Category 4 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity as it neared Florida, where it could either plow inland or tear along the Atlantic coast through Friday night, the Miami-based US National Hurricane Center said.

Few storms with winds as powerful as Matthew’s have struck Florida, and the NHC warned of “potentially disastrous impacts”.

The US National Weather Service said the storm could be the most powerful to strike northeast Florida in 118 years.

{New legislation mandates life imprisonment of “honour” killers – even if victim’s relatives forgive the murderers.}

Pakistan’s parliament has unanimously passed legislation against “honour killings” – mandating life imprisonment, 25 years in prison, for convicted murderers even if the victim’s relatives forgive them.

The legislation was approved on Thursday in a joint session of the lower and upper houses of parliament, three months after an outspoken social media celebrity, Qandeel Baloch, was strangled by her brother.

“This is a step in the right direction,” women’s activist and columnist Aisha Sarwari told AFP news agency. “We should take our little wins where we get them and proceed forward and not retreat.”

But rights activist Farzana Bari was more cautious, saying the bill still allowed a judge to decide whether a murder qualified as an “honour killing” or not.

Only about one-third of the 446 legislators attended the session, but debate was raucous.

Conservative Senator Hafiz Hamdullah said parliament should instead address elopements by women, claiming 17,000 had done so since 2014.

“Why don’t we see what are the reasons behind such killings? Why are girls eloping from their homes?” he said.

He told AP news agency later that the law was bringing Western-style independence for women.

“They are trying to impose Western culture over here. We will not allow [it],” he said. “We will impose the law that our holy Quran and Sunnah [tradition] say.”

Damage to ‘honour’

About 500 women are killed each year in Pakistan at the hands of family members over perceived damage to “honour”, which can involve eloping, fraternising with men, or any other infraction against conservative values relating to women.

In most cases, the victim is a woman and the killer is a relative who escapes punishment by seeking forgiveness for the crime from family members.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif issued a statement hailing the passage of the bill and vowed police and courts would implement it.

“We will make … sure to fully enforce this legislation across the country,” he said.

“Women are the most essential part of our society and I believe in their empowerment, protection and emancipation.”

Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said it’s important to wait and see how the law will be implemented at the investigation level.

“There has been strong legislation in the past, but people have found loopholes,” he said.

“It will be interesting to see how quickly this one is enforced – how serious the government really is in trying to curb this menace.”

The assembly also passed a bill boosting the punishment for some rape offences, mandating DNA testing, and making the rape of a minor or the disabled punishable by life imprisonment or death.

Rape conviction rates are close to zero percent, largely because of the law’s reliance on circumstantial evidence and a lack of forensic testing.

Rights groups and politicians have for years called for tougher laws to tackle perpetrators of violence against women in Pakistan.

“We hope that these new laws will help to generate a cultural shift in Pakistani society and that women will be able to live their lives in safety,” Yasmeen Hassan from Equality Now told Reuters news agency.