DEARBORN: Nizam Abazid is gleefully planning his first trip in decades to Syria, where he grew up. Rama Alhoussaini was only 6 years old when her family moved to the US, but she’s excited about the prospect of introducing her three kids to relatives they’ve never met in person.
They are among thousands of Detroit-area Syrian Americans who are celebrating the unexpected overthrow of the Syrian government, which crushed dissent and imprisoned political enemies with impunity during the more than 50-year reign of ousted President Bashar Assad and his father before him.
“As of Saturday night, the Assad regime is no longer in power,” Alhoussaini, 31, said through tears Tuesday at one of the Detroit-area school and day care facilities her family operates. “And it’s such a surreal moment to even say that out loud, because I never thought that I would see this day.”
It may be some time before either visits Syria. Though happy to see Assad go, many Western countries are waiting for the dust to settle before committing to a Syria strategy, including whether it’s safe for the millions who fled the country’s civil war to return.
Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who led the insurgency that toppled Assad after an astonishing advance that took less than two weeks, has disavowed his group’s former ties to Al-Qaeda and cast himself as a champion of pluralism and tolerance. But the US still labels him a terrorist and warns against any travel to Syria, where the US hasn’t had an embassy since 2012, the year after the war started.
But for Syrians in the US who have been unable to visit, the overthrow of the Assad government has given them hope that they can safely return, either for good or to visit.
“The end of the regime is the hope for all the Syrian people,” Abazid said this week, days after Assad and his family fled to Russia.
Abazid said he could go to Syria whenever, since he holds dual US and Syrian citizenship, but that he’ll wait a few months for things there to settle down.
Although European leaders have said it’s not safe enough yet to allow war-displaced refugees to return to Syria, Abazid said he and his brother aren’t concerned.
“When Assad’s forces were in power, my fate would’ve been in jail or beheaded,” Abazid said. “But now, I will not be worried about that anymore.”
Many Syrians who immigrated to the US settled in the Detroit area. Michigan has the largest concentration of Arab Americans of any state and is home to the country’s largest Arab-majority city, Dearborn. It also has more than 310,000 residents who are of Middle Eastern or North African descent.
As rebel forces seized control of Syria, capping a lightning-quick advance that few thought possible even a month ago, Syrians in and around Detroit — like their counterparts all over the world — followed along in disbelief as reports poured in about one city after another slipping from Assad’s grip. When news broke that Assad’s government had fallen, celebrations erupted.
Abazid, who owns a cellphone business in Dearborn, was born in Daraa, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) south of the Syrian capital, Damascus. He moved to the US in 1984 at age 18, and although he’s gone back a few times, he hasn’t visited since 1998 because of what he described as “harassment” by Syrian intelligence. That trip had to be heavily coordinated with US authorities, as he said Syrian authorities took him into custody and detained him for more than six months during a 1990 visit.
“When I was kidnapped from the airport, my family didn’t even know ... what it was about,” he told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “I still don’t know the reason. I have no idea why I was kidnapped.”
Abazid, 59, said his parents have died since that 1998 trip, but his five sisters still live in Syria. Each of his four brothers left Syria during the 1970s and 1980s, including one who hasn’t been back since emigrating 53 years ago, shortly after Bashar Assad’s father, Hafez Assad, rose to power.
Alhoussaini, who lives in West Bloomfield Township, said she was born in Damascus and moved to the Detroit area as a young girl, “mainly because there was nothing left for us in Syria.”
She said under the Assad family’s rule, her grandfather’s land was taken. Authorities detained him for almost a month. Her father was also detained before the family left.
“There never needed to be a reason,” Alhoussaini said. “My dad was able to return one time, in 2010. And he has not been able to go back to his home country since, mainly because we spoke up against the Assad regime when the revolution started in 2011. And we attended many protests here. We were vocal on social media about it, did many interviews.”
But with Bashar Assad gone and Syria in the hands of the rebels, “We don’t have to be afraid anymore to visit our country,” she said.
Her father, 61, is considering making a trip to Syria to see his siblings and visit his parents’ graves. Alhoussaini said she and her husband, who is from the northern city of Aleppo, want to take their kids over to visit with family and friends.
Alhoussaini’s three sisters, ages 40, 34 and 29, were also born in Syria. But none of them have been back.
Now, there is hope and amazement that people in Syria can celebrate in the streets, she said.
Alhoussaini said she thinks people who were born and raised in the US won’t be able to fully relate, because Americans enjoy a freedom of expression that people in Syria have never had.
“You can say what you want. You can go out into the street and protest whoever you want,” she said. “You will not be detained for it. You will not be killed for it.”
The Detroit area’s many Syrians are celebrating Assad’s overthrow and planning long-delayed visits
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The Detroit area’s many Syrians are celebrating Assad’s overthrow and planning long-delayed visits
- Nizam Abazid says he’s excited to see the country of his birth for the first time since 1998 but that he can now return without fear.
Russian attack kills four in Kyiv
- The attack came as Kyiv has upped its aerial attacks on Russian energy and military facilities
“We already have four dead in Shevchenkivsky district,” said Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, in a Telegram post, adding that three people were injured.
Hours earlier, Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko warned of a “ballistic missile threat” against the capital and said the city’s air defense was activated.
He later said a building in Shevchenkivsky district had its windows broken, with smoke coming from it, while a water pipeline in the area was damaged.
In addition, a metro station near the city’s center also suffered damage and was temporarily closed, with Kyiv’s trains bypassing that stop, Klitschko said.
The attack – a rare strike on the heart of the Ukrainian capital – came as Kyiv has upped its aerial attacks on Russian energy and military facilities in recent months.
Kyiv’s army has hit several Russian oil depots recently, including two major strikes on a facility near a military airfield in Russia’s Saratov region that triggered days-long blazes.
Also on Saturday, Russian forces “attacked the center” of Zaporizhzhia, injuring two people, according to local governor Ivan Fedorov. An administrative building of an industrial facility was partially damaged, he said.
India uses AI to avoid stampedes at gathering of 400 million pilgrims
- Deadly crowd crushes are a notorious feature of Indian religious festivals
- Kumbh Mela, with unfathomable throngs, has grim track record of stampedes
PRAYAGRAJ: Keen to improve India’s abysmal crowd management record at large-scale religious events, organizers of the world’s largest human gathering are using artificial intelligence to try to prevent stampedes.
Organizers predict up to 400 million pilgrims will visit the Kumbh Mela, a millennia-old sacred show of Hindu piety and ritual bathing that began Monday and runs for six weeks.
Deadly crowd crushes are a notorious feature of Indian religious festivals, and the Kumbh Mela, with its unfathomable throngs of devotees, has a grim track record of stampedes.
“We want everyone to go back home happily after having fulfilled their spiritual duties,” Amit Kumar, a senior police officer heading tech operations in the festival, told AFP.
“AI is helping us avoid reaching that critical mass in sensitive places.”
More than 400 people died after being trampled or drowned at the Kumbh Mela on a single day of the festival in 1954, one of the largest tolls in a crowd-related disaster globally.
Another 36 people were crushed to death in 2013, the last time the festival was staged in the northern city of Prayagraj.
But this time, authorities say the technology they have deployed will help them gather accurate estimates of crowd sizes, allowing them to be better prepared for potential trouble.
Police say they have installed around 300 cameras at the festival site and on roads leading to the sprawling encampment, mounted on poles and a fleet of overhead drones.
Not far from the spiritual center of the festival at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, the network is overseen in a glass-panelled command and control room by a small army of police officers and technicians.
“We can look at the entire Kumbh Mela from here,” said Kumar. “There are camera angles where we cannot even see complete bodies and we have to count using heads or torsos.”
Kumar said the footage fed into an AI algorithm that gives its handlers an overall estimate of a crowd stretching for miles in every direction, cross-checked against data from railways and bus operators.
“We are using AI to track people flow, crowd density at various inlets, adding them up and then interpolating from there,” he added.
The system sounds the alarm if sections of the crowd get so concentrated that they pose a safety threat.
The Kumbh Mela is rooted in Hindu mythology, a battle between deities and demons for control of a pitcher containing the nectar of immortality.
Organizers say the scale of this year’s festival is that of a temporary country — with numbers expected to total around the combined populations of the United States and Canada.
Some six million devotees took a dip in the river on the first morning of the festival, according to official estimates.
With a congregation that size, Kumar said that some degree of crowd crush is inevitable.
“The personal bubble of an individual is quite big in the West,” said Kumar, explaining how the critical threshold at which AI crowd control systems ring the alarm is higher than in other countries using similar crowd management systems.
“The standard there is three people per square foot,” he added. “But we can afford to go several times higher than that.”
Organizers have been eager to tout the technological advancements of this year’s edition of the Kumbh Mela and their attendant benefits for pilgrims.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, a devout Hindu monk whose government is responsible for organizing the festival, has described it as an event “at the confluence of faith and modernity.”
“The fact that there are cameras and drones makes us feel safe,” 28-year-old automotive engineer Harshit Joshi, one of the millions of pilgrims to arrive for the start of the festival, told AFP.
Impeached South Korean president arrives for arrest warrant hearing
- Yoon Suk Yeol threw the nation into chaos on Dec. 3 when he attempted to suspend civilian rule
- Embattled president’s martial law bid lasted just six hours, with lawmakers voting it down
SEOUL: Impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol arrived at court for the first time Saturday to attend a hearing that will decide whether to extend his detention as investigators probe his failed martial law bid.
Yoon, who has claimed his arrest is illegal, threw the nation into chaos on December 3 when he attempted to suspend civilian rule, citing the need to combat threats from “anti-state elements.”
Yoon’s die-hard supporters gathered outside the court building Saturday, even trying to surround the blue van carrying the suspended leader.
Yoon’s martial law bid lasted just six hours, with lawmakers voting it down despite the president ordering soldiers to storm parliament to stop them.
Yoon was subsequently impeached by parliament and resisted arrest for weeks, holed up in his guarded residence until he was finally detained Wednesday in a dawn raid.
South Korea’s first sitting president to be detained, Yoon has refused to cooperate during the initial 48 hours detectives were allowed to hold him.
But the disgraced president remains in custody after investigators requested a new warrant Friday to extend his detention.
A judge at Seoul Western District Court was set to review the request at a 2:00 p.m. (0500 GMT) hearing, with her decision expected Saturday night or early Sunday.
Before the hearing, Yoon’s lawyer Yoon Kab-keun said the president would attend “with the intention of restoring his honor.”
If approved, the new warrant would likely extend Yoon’s detention by 20 days, giving prosecutors time to formalize an indictment.
The Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) is probing Yoon for insurrection, a charge that could see him jailed for life or executed if found guilty.
Yoon said Wednesday he had agreed to leave his compound to avoid “bloodshed,” but that he did not accept the legality of the investigation.
His supporters have gathered in front of the court since Friday, holding South Korean and American flags and demanding judges dismiss the request to extend the president’s detention.
The court closed its entrance to the public Friday evening, citing safety concerns.
Yoon has refused to answer investigators’ questions, with his legal team saying the president explained his position when detained on Wednesday.
The president has also been absent from a parallel probe at the Constitutional Court, which is mulling whether to uphold his impeachment.
If the court rules against Yoon, he will lose the presidency and elections will be called within 60 days.
He did not attend the first two hearings this week, but the trial, which could last months, will continue in his absence.
Although Yoon won the presidential election in 2022, the opposition Democratic Party has a majority in parliament after winning legislative polls last year.
The Democratic Party has celebrated the president’s arrest, with a top official calling it “the first step” to restoring constitutional and legal order.
As challenges against the embattled leader mount, parliament passed a bill late Friday to launch a special counsel probe into Yoon over his failed martial law bid.
China’s population falls for a third straight year, posing challenges for its government and economy
China’s population falls for a third straight year, posing challenges for its government and economy
- China’s population stood at 1.408 billion at the end of 2024, a decline of 1.39 million from the previous year
- Rising costs of living are causing young people to put off or rule out marriage and child birth while pursuing higher education and careers
- China has long been among the world’s most populous nations, enduring invasions, floods and other natural disasters
TAIPEI, Taiwan: China’s population fell last year for the third straight year, its government said Friday, pointing to further demographic challenges for the world’s second most populous nation, which is now facing both an aging population and an emerging shortage of working age people.
China’s population stood at 1.408 billion at the end of 2024, a decline of 1.39 million from the previous year.
The figures announced by the government in Beijing follow trends worldwide, but especially in East Asia, where Japan, South Korea and other nations have seen their birth rates plummet. China three years ago joined Japan and most of Eastern Europe among other nations whose population is falling.
The reasons are in many cases similar: Rising costs of living are causing young people to put off or rule out marriage and child birth while pursuing higher education and careers. While people are living longer, that’s not enough to keep up with rate of new births.
Countries such as China that allow very little immigration are especially at risk.
China has long been among the world’s most populous nations, enduring invasions, floods and other natural disasters to sustain a population that thrived on rice in the south and wheat in the north. Following the end of World War II and the Communist Party’s rise to power in 1949, large families re-emerged and the population doubled in just three decades, even after tens of millions died in the Great Leap Forward that sought to revolutionize agriculture and industry and the Cultural Revolution that followed a few years later.
After the end of the Cultural Revolution and leader Mao Zedong’s death, Communist bureaucrats began to worry the country’s population was outstripping its ability to feed itself and began implementing a draconian “one child policy.” Though it was never law, women had to apply for permission to have a child and violators could face forced late-term abortions and birth control procedures, massive fines and the prospect of their child being deprived an identification number, effectively making them non-citizens.
Rural China, where the preference for male offspring was especially strong and two children were still ostensibly allowed, became the focus of government efforts, with women forced to present evidence they were menstruating and buildings emblazoned with slogans such as “have fewer children, have better children.”
The government sought to stamp out selective abortion of female children, but with abortions legal and readily available, those operating illicit sonogram machines enjoyed a thriving business.
That has been the biggest factor in China’s lopsided sex ratio, with as many as millions more boys born for every 100 girls, raising the possibility of social instability among China’s army of bachelors. Friday’s report gave the sex imbalance as 104.34 men to every 100 women, though independent groups give the imbalance as considerably higher.
More disturbing for the government was the drastically falling birthrate, with China’s total population dropping for the first time in decades in 2023 and China being narrowly overtaken by India as the world’s most populous nation in the same year. A rapidly aging population, declining workforce, lack of consumer markets and migration abroad are putting the system under severe pressure.
While spending on the military and flashy infrastructure projects continues to rise, China’s already frail social security system is teetering, with increasing numbers of Chinese refusing to pay into the underfunded pension system.
Already, more than one-fifth of the population is aged 60 or over, with the official figure given as 310.3 million or 22 percent of the total population. By 2035, this number is forecast to exceed 30 percent, sparking discussion of changes to the official retirement age, which one of the lowest in the world. With fewer students, some vacant schools and kindergartens are meanwhile being transformed into care facilities for older people.
Such developments are giving some credence to the aphorism that China, now the world’s second largest economy but facing major headwinds, will “grow old before it grows rich.”
Government inducements including cash payouts for having up to three children and financial help with housing costs have had only temporary effects.
Meanwhile, China continued its transition to an urban society, with 10 million more people moving to cities for an urbanization rate of 67 percent, up almost a percentage point from the previous year.
Azerbaijan opens war crimes trial of Armenian separatists
- Among the 15 ex-officials are Karabakh’s former self-styled presidents, Arkady Ghukasyan, Bako Sahakyan and Araik Harutyunyan
- Armenia has denounced the separatist leaders’ arrests and demanded their release
BAKU: Azerbaijan on Friday opened war crimes trials against Armenian separatists who led the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region before it was recaptured by Baku in a lightning offensive in 2023.
Azerbaijan’s seizure of the mountainous region ended nearly three decades of control by Armenian separatists, prompting the region’s entire ethnic Armenian population — more than 100,000 people — to flee.
Baku arrested several of the separatist leaders on charges of “planning, preparing and initiating” alleged war crimes, including torture, “waging an aggressive war” and the “deportation or forced displacement of the population.”
Armenia has denounced the separatist leaders’ arrests and demanded their liberation.
Two trials — one for 15 former officials, another for the region’s billionaire former leader Ruben Vardanyan — opened in the Azeri capital of Baku on Friday.
Among the 15 ex-officials are Karabakh’s former self-styled presidents, Arkady Ghukasyan, Bako Sahakyan and Araik Harutyunyan.
Hearings in both trials were held behind closed doors, with only Azeri state media allowed to view the proceedings.
Vardanyan is a former banker who made his fortune in Russia and then ruled the breakaway region between November 2022 and February 2023.
He has denied the charges — which could seem him jailed for life — and declared himself a “political prisoner.”
In a statement issued by his family on Thursday, he said: “I once again reiterate and state my complete innocence and the innocence of my Armenian compatriots also being held as political prisoners and demand an immediate end to this politically motivated case against us.”
The court rejected a request by his lawyers to merge the two trials, state media reported.
Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but was controlled by pro-Armenian separatists for more than three decades.
The two Caucasus foes fought wars for control of the region at the end of the Soviet Union and again in 2020, before Azerbaijan seized the entire area in a 24-hour offensive in September 2023.
Armenia’s foreign ministry said last year that it would take “all possible steps to protect the rights” of those being put on trial, “including in international courts.”
