China defense minister calls for ‘negotiation’ to end Ukraine, Gaza wars

Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun delivers a speech at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Xiangshan Forum in the Chinese capital on September 13, 2024. (REUTERS)
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Updated 13 September 2024
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China defense minister calls for ‘negotiation’ to end Ukraine, Gaza wars

  • “Promoting peace and negotiation is the only way out,” Dong Jun tells gathering of military officials in Beijing
  • “There is no winner in war and conflict, and confrontation leads nowhere,” he said

BEIJING: Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun said Friday that “negotiation” was the only solution to conflicts such as the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, as he addressed a global gathering of military officials in Beijing.
Scores of delegates are in Beijing for the Xiangshan Forum, dubbed China’s answer to the annual Shangri-La meeting in Singapore.
It is hosting more than 500 representatives from over 90 countries and organizations across three days, according to state media.
Dong told the opening ceremony: “To resolve hotspot issues such as the crisis in Ukraine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, promoting peace and negotiation is the only way out.”
“There is no winner in war and conflict, and confrontation leads nowhere,” Dong said.
“The more acute the conflict, the more we cannot give up dialogue and consultation. The end of any conflict is reconciliation,” he added, calling on all countries to promote “peaceful development and inclusive governance.”




Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun and other military leaders attend the Beijing Xiangshan Forum on September 13, 2024. (REUTERS)

More official speeches are expected on Friday, and top military representatives from Russia, Pakistan, Singapore, Iran, Germany and others will participate in roundtable talks.
Topics for discussion at the forum include US-China relations, security in Europe and Asia, and the challenges of defense in a multipolar world.
Dong in his speech urged against “the proliferation of national security concepts” to ensure “new technologies can better benefit the whole mankind” — a likely reference to the United States’ efforts to block Beijing’s access to advanced technology.
“At a time of high global security risks and increased instability and unpredictability, the responsibility for building the defense and security capacity of all countries is enormous,” Dong said.
Beijing, he added, “is willing to work with all parties to strengthen strategic alignment, deepen defense consultations, discuss the signing of bilateral and multilateral agreements on defense cooperation.”

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Chase is attending the forum, just a few days after top Washington and Beijing commanders held their first talks.
Washington and Beijing remain at odds on issues from trade to the status of self-ruled Taiwan and China’s increasingly assertive approach in disputed maritime regions.
But they have sought to re-establish regular military-to-military talks in a bid to prevent flashpoint disputes from spinning out of control.
A key flashpoint is the South China Sea, where Chinese vessels have engaged in a series of high-profile confrontations with Philippine ships in recent months.
China claims almost all of the economically vital body of water despite competing claims from other countries and an international court ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.
On Thursday, senior military official Lt. Gen. He Lei told journalists at the forum that China would “crush” any foreign incursion into its sovereign territory including in the South China Sea.
 


Record $73m bribe lands former investigator in Russian jail

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Record $73m bribe lands former investigator in Russian jail

Marat Tambiyev was found guilty of accepting the bribes, mainly in bitcoin, from members of an organized crime group

MOSCOW: A former Russian state investigator was jailed for 16 years on Tuesday for taking bribes equivalent to around $73 million, the largest in the history of modern Russia, state news agency TASS said.
Marat Tambiyev was found guilty of accepting the bribes, mainly in bitcoin, from members of an organized crime group. He had protested his innocence.
Kristina Lyakhovenko, a lower-ranked colleague of Tambiyev, was jailed for nine years. Lawyers for both of them said they would appeal.
Russia is currently pursuing a spate of high-profile bribery investigations, many involving senior figures in the military.

Europe court condemns Cyprus over return of Syrian refugees to Lebanon

Updated 3 min 38 sec ago
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Europe court condemns Cyprus over return of Syrian refugees to Lebanon

STRASBOURG: The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday condemned Cyprus for returning to Lebanon two Syrian refugees who had arrived on a small boat, without examining their asylum claim.
In a damning verdict, the ECHR said that Cyprus had committed four violations of the European Convention on Human Rights, which the Strasbourg-based court enforces, by returning the two refugees to Lebanon.
The pair fled the Syrian city of Idlib and the civil war in their home country in 2016, staying in refugee camps in Lebanon. In 2020 they paid a smuggler to take them across the Mediterranean to Cyprus along with over two dozen other migrants, the ECHR said.
The boat was intercepted by the Cypriot maritime authorities who said they had entered Cypriot territorial waters without permission and swiftly returned then to Lebanon where they still remain.
Cypriot authorities had essentially returned the pair to Lebanon “without processing their asylum claims and without all the steps required under the refugee law,” said the verdict.
Cyprus failed to conduct “any assessment of the risk of lack of access to an effective asylum process in Lebanon or the living conditions of asylum-seekers there,” it added.
Nicosia had also not assessed the risk of “refoulement” — the forcible return of refugees to a country such as Syria where they might be subjected to persecution, it added.
The Court said the two plaintiffs, named as M.A. and Z.R. said they had been “tricked” into thinking that they would be led ashore on arrival in Cyprus and were instead forced to board another boat that took them back to Lebanon.
The Court ordered Cyprus to pay 22,000 euros in damages to each applicant and 4,700 euros jointly for costs and expenses.
The ECHR is part of the 46-member Council of Europe, the continent’s top rights body and an entirely separate entity from the European Union.

Water gushes through palm trees and sand dunes after rare rain in the Sahara Desert

Updated 08 October 2024
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Water gushes through palm trees and sand dunes after rare rain in the Sahara Desert

  • Southeastern Morocco’s desert is among the most arid places in the world and rarely experiences rain in late summer
RABAT: A rare deluge of rainfall left blue lagoons of water amid the palm trees and sand dunes of the Sahara desert, nourishing some of its most drought-stricken regions with more water than many had seen in decades.
Southeastern Morocco’s desert is among the most arid places in the world and rarely experiences rain in late summer.
The Moroccan government said two days of rainfall in September had exceeded yearly averages in several areas that get an average of less than 250 millimeters (10 inches) annually, including Tata, one of the areas hit hardest. In Tagounite, a village about 450 km (280 miles) south of the capital Rabat, more than 100 mm (3.9 inches) was recorded in a 24-hour period.
The storms provided more rainfall than had been seen in decades, leaving striking images of bountiful water gushing through the Saharan sands amid castles and desert flora.
In desert communities frequented by the many tourists who visit the Sahara, 4x4s motored through the puddles and residents surveyed the scene in awe.
“It’s been 30 to 50 years since we’ve had this much rain in such a short space of time,” said Houssine Youabeb of Morocco’s General Directorate of Meteorology.
Such rains, which meteorologists are calling an extratropical storm, may indeed change the course of the region’s weather in months and years to come as the air retains more moisture, causing more evaporation and drawing more storms, Youabeb said.
Six consecutive years of drought have posed challenges for much of Morocco, forcing farmers to leave fields fallow and cities and villages to ration water consumption.
The bounty of rainfall will likely help refill the large groundwater aquifers that lie beneath the desert and are relied upon to supply water in desert communities. The region’s dammed reservoirs reported refilling at record rates throughout September. However, it’s unclear how far September’s rains will go toward alleviating drought.
Yet water gushing through the sands and oases left more than 20 dead in Morocco and Algeria and damaged the farmers’ harvests, forcing the government to allocate emergency relief funds, including in some areas affected by last year’s earthquake.
NASA satellites showed water rushing in to fill Lake Iriqui, a famous lakebed between Zagora and Tata that had been dry for 50 years.

Monster hurricane Milton threatens an already battered Florida

Updated 08 October 2024
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Monster hurricane Milton threatens an already battered Florida

  • The densely populated west coast of Florida braces for landfall on Wednesday
  • Milton became the third-fastest intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic Ocean

Hurricane Milton weakened slightly to a still powerful Category 4 storm on Tuesday as it threatened Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on its way to Florida, where more than a million people were ordered to evacuate from its path.
The densely populated west coast of Florida, still reeling from the devastating Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago, braced for landfall on Wednesday.
The US National Hurricane Center projected the storm was likely to hit near the Tampa Bay metropolitan area, home to more than 3 million people and where some evacuees rushed to dispose of mounds of debris left behind by Helene on their way out of town.
With maximum sustained winds of 270kph, Milton eased overnight from the strongest level storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.
Wind speeds could decrease further to 233kph by the time it approaches Florida, according to the hurricane center, but still capable of causing catastrophic damage, including power outages expected to last days.
Fed by warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Milton became the third-fastest intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic Ocean, the Hurricane Center said, as it surged from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in less than 24 hours.
Its path from west to east was also unusual, as Gulf hurricanes typically form in the Caribbean Sea and make landfall after traveling west and turning north.
“It is exceedingly rare for a hurricane to form in the western Gulf, track eastward, and make landfall on the western coast of Florida,” said Jonathan Lin, an atmospheric scientist at Cornell University. “This has big implications since the track of the storm plays a role in determining where the storm surge will be the largest.”
The Hurricane Center forecast storm surges of 3 to 4.5 meters along a stretch of coastline north and south of Tampa Bay.
Jamie Rhome, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center, said Milton was expected to grow in size before making landfall on Wednesday, putting hundreds of miles of coastline within the storm surge danger zone.
Milton was likely to remain a hurricane for its entire journey across the Florida peninsula, Rhome told a Monday news briefing.
YUCATAN DRENCHED
As of 1 a.m. CDT on Tuesday (0600 GMT), the eye of the storm was 105km north-northeast of Progreso, a Mexican port near the Yucatan state capital of Merida, and 840km southwest of Tampa, moving east at 15kph.
While the eye of the storm appeared to have passed to the north of the Yucatan Peninsula, dangerous conditions were still expected to lash the region the early hours of Tuesday.
“We ask you to be pay attention to the information issued by civil protection officials from the government of Mexico and Yucatan’s government as well and if you live in lowlands it is better to go to the shelters that have been already installed,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said earlier.
The area is home to the picturesque colonial-era city of Merida, population 1.2 million, several Maya ruins popular with tourists and the port of Progreso.
In Florida, counties along the western coast ordered people in low-lying areas to take shelter on higher ground.
Pinellas County, which includes St. Petersburg, said it ordered the evacuation of more than 500,000 people. Lee County said 416,000 people lived in its mandatory evacuation zones. At least six other coastal counties ordered evacuations including Hillsborough County, which includes the city of Tampa.
With one final day for people to evacuate on Tuesday, local officials raised concerns of traffic jams and long lines at gas stations.
Relief efforts remain ongoing throughout much of the US Southeast in the wake of Helene, a Category-4 hurricane that made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26, killed more than 200 people and caused billions of dollars in damage across six states.


Russian attack on Ukrainian city of Kharkiv injures 11, governor says

Updated 08 October 2024
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Russian attack on Ukrainian city of Kharkiv injures 11, governor says

  • Kharkiv has been a frequent target of Russian attacks since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022

KYIV: A Russian attack on the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine injured at least 11 people on Tuesday, including a child, regional officials said.
Governor Oleh Syniehubov said via the Telegram messaging app that the attack had damaged infrastructure and the authorities were working to verify the type of weapon used.
He and Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov said it was likely that a civilian production facility had been hit. Terekhov said a fire had broken out.
Located 30km from the border with Russia, Kharkiv has been a frequent target of Russian attacks since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Last week, a Russian guided bomb attack on the city struck a five-story apartment block, inuring 10 people, local officials said.