By Michael Holden
LONDON (Reuters) - A British police officer on Friday admitted murdering Sarah Everard whose killing sparked anger and soul-searching across the country about what police, government and society can do to stop male violence against women.
Wayne Couzens, 48, a London officer who guarded diplomatic premises, had previously admitted rape and kidnap.
Everard, 33, was abducted as she walked home from a friend's house in south London on March 3 and her body was later found in woodland around 50 miles away in southeast England.
A post-mortem last month concluded she had died as a result of compression of the neck.
Appearing by videolink from prison for a hearing at London's Old Bailey Court, Couzens, bearded and wearing a blue sweatshirt sat head bowed and said "guilty ma'am" when asked how he pleaded to the charge of murder
Prosecutor Tom Little said the officer had never met Everard prior to kidnapping her from London's South Circular road and were "total strangers".
Little said it might not be possible to determine exactly what had happened, and the judge Adrian Fulford said Couzens had previously only given an entirely false account of events.
"This has been a mammoth investigation which has produced some very significant results in terms of being able to understand what happened," Fulford said.
Couzens' lawyer James Sturman said his client's pleas represented "truly genuine guilt and remorse for what he did."
"As he put it to us this morning he will bear this burden for the rest of his life, and he deserves to - his words 'and I deserve to'. He accepts the victims in this case are the Everard family and friends, not him," Sturman told the court.
A two-day sentencing hearing, which will consider psychiatric reports, will begin on Sept. 29.
Everard's murder provoked outpourings of anger from women who have recounted their own experiences and fears of walking the streets on their own at night, prompting Prime Minister Boris Johnson to promise action including money for better street lighting.
(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by William James and Toby Chopra)
By Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali and Hamid Shalizi
KABUL, (Reuters) - Afghan Air Force Major Dastagir Zamaray had grown so fearful of Taliban assassinations of off-duty forces in Kabul that he decided to sell his home to move to a safer pocket of Afghanistan's sprawling capital.
Instead of being greeted by a prospective buyer at his realtor's office earlier this year, the 41-year-old pilot was confronted by a gunman who walked inside and, without a word, fatally shot the real estate agent in the mouth.
Zamaray reached for his sidearm but the gunman shot him in the head. The father of seven collapsed dead on his 14-year-old son, who had tagged along. The boy was spared, but barely speaks anymore, his family says.
Zamaray “only went there because he personally knew the realtor and thought it was safe," Samiullah Darman, his brother-in-law, told Reuters. "We didn’t know that he would never come back."
At least seven Afghan pilots, including Zamaray, have been assassinated off base in recent months, according to two senior Afghan government officials. This series of targeted killings, which haven't been previously reported, illustrate what U.S. and Afghan officials believe is a deliberate Taliban effort to destroy one of Afghanistan's most valuable military assets: its corps of U.S.- and NATO-trained military pilots.
In so doing, the Taliban -- who have no air force -- are looking to level the playing field as they press major ground offensives. The militants are quickly seizing territory once controlled by the U.S.-backed government of President Ashraf Ghani, raising fears they could eventually try to topple Kabul.
Reuters confirmed the identities of two of the slain pilots through family members. It could not independently verify the names of the other five who were allegedly targeted.
In response to questions from Reuters, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed the group had killed Zamaray, and that it had started a program that will see Afghan Air Force pilots “targeted and eliminated because all of them do bombardment against their people."
A U.N. report documented 229 civilian deaths caused by the Taliban in Afghanistan in the first three months of 2021, and 41 civilian deaths caused by the Afghan Air Force over the same period.
Afghanistan's government has not publicly disclosed the number of pilots assassinated in targeted killings. The nation's Defense Ministry did not respond to requests for comment. The Pentagon said it was aware of the deaths of several Afghan pilots in killings claimed by the Taliban, but declined comment on U.S. intelligence and investigations.
Afghan military pilots are particularly attractive assassination targets, current and former U.S. and Afghan officials say. They can strike Taliban forces massing for major attacks, shuttle commandos to missions and provide life-saving air cover for Afghan ground troops. Pilots take years to train and are hard to replace, representing an outsized blow to the country's defenses with every loss.
Shoot-downs and accidents are ever-present risks. Yet these pilots often are most vulnerable in the streets of their own neighborhoods, where attackers can come from anywhere, said retired U.S. Brigadier General David Hicks, who commanded the training effort for the Afghan Air Force from 2016 to 2017.
"Their lives were at much greater risk during that time (off base) than they were while they were flying combat missions," Hicks said.
Although Taliban assassinations of pilots have happened in years past, the recent killings take on greater significance as the Afghan Air Force is tested like never before.
Just last week, U.S. forces left America’s main military bastion in Afghanistan, Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, as they complete their withdrawal from the country 20 years after ousting the Taliban following the Al Qaeda attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"Pilots are on top of the Taliban's hit list," the senior Afghan government official said.
That Afghan official and two others, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they're working to protect pilots and their families, moving some to on-base housing and relocating others to safer civilian neighborhoods.
A White House National Security Council spokesperson strongly condemned “all targeted assassinations in Afghanistan” and stressed U.S. commitments to continue providing security assistance to the Afghan military.
The Afghan Air Force is heavily dependent on U.S. training, equipment and maintenance as well as logistics to ensure a reliable pipeline of munitions and spare parts. The Pentagon has yet to fully detail how it will keep Afghan aviators flying after the U.S.-led mission formally ends in coming weeks, as ordered by President Joe Biden.
The Pentagon told Reuters it would seek to provide Afghanistan with extra aircraft to ease the strain of combat losses and maintenance downtime.
David Petraeus, a former CIA director and former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, warned that failure of the United States to provide enough support for the Afghan military could be disastrous.
"We are potentially consigning Afghanistan and the Afghan people to a civil war," Petraeus said in an interview.
Washington is moving to evacuate interpreters who worked for the U.S. military, but it’s unclear if the Biden administration would risk doing the same for Afghan forces, like pilots. Some officials believe offering an exit strategy for elite Afghan troops could accelerate a feared collapse following the U.S. withdrawal.
U.S. intelligence assessments have warned that the Afghan government could fall in as little as six months, two U.S. officials told Reuters.
"No one wants to have the (Afghan forces) preemptively throw in the towel," another U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
PRECIOUS, OVER-STRETCHED
Two Afghan Air Force pilots were killed on June 7 while trying to evacuate troops wounded during a surge of fighting against the Taliban insurgency.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for shooting down their Russian-made, U.S.-financed Mi-17 helicopter. Local media identified the deceased pilots as Milad Massoud and Abdul Alim Shahrayari. The Afghan Defense Ministry said in a statement that the aircraft crashed, but it did not say why, nor would it identify the pilots. An Afghan official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the chopper was shot down.
Both the crew and the aircraft were precious.
The Afghan fleet contained just 13 Mi-17 helicopters and 65 qualified aircrews of pilots and co-pilots to fly them, according to U.S. military data from April 2021 and November 2020, respectively.
Those data show the entire Afghan Air Force comprises 339 qualified aircrews and 160 aircraft -- less than a quarter of the fleet size of U.S. commercial carrier Southwest Airlines. The "usable" fleet is even smaller - around 140 aircraft - after accounting for aircraft undergoing maintenance, according to the same April data.
Built in America's image, the Afghan Air Force is equipped with UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and lumbering C-130H transport aircraft, neither of which Afghans know how to maintain, according to a Pentagon report released in April. Those aircraft are serviced by U.S.-funded contractors, which also handle most maintenance for the rest of the fleet, including A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft, AC-208 Eliminator planes and MD-530 helicopters, according to that report.
A separate 2020 report by the Pentagon's Lead Inspector General warned that Afghanistan's fleet would stop being "combat effective" within a few months if the Afghan Air Force were to lose contractor support. The Pentagon has not said how many contractors will remain in Afghanistan.
Reuters contacted two large U.S. defense contractors that support the Afghan Air Force: Leidos Holdings Inc and DynCorp International, now part of Amentum Services Inc. Spokespeople for those companies declined to say how many contractors, if any, were still in Afghanistan.
In comments to Reuters, the Pentagon acknowledged the withdrawal of contractors could impact routine maintenance, something it was working to address. Spokesman Major Rob Lodewick said it had already become common practice to send aircraft abroad for heavy maintenance.
Petraeus said that’s not only costly, but it’s "impractical" in a wartime setting to fly aircraft out of Afghanistan for repairs. Remote instruction and meetings via video-conference also have natural limitations.
Along with Afghanistan's Special Forces, the Afghan Air Force is a pillar of the nation's strategy for preventing a Taliban takeover of cities. In addition to providing air cover and performing bombing raids, pilots conduct medical evacuations, ferry supplies and transport troops for the country's over-stretched army.
Since Biden’s April withdrawal announcement, Taliban militants have more than doubled the number of districts under their control in Afghanistan to 203, which is nearly half the country’s 407 districts, according to the Long War Journal, an online publication associated with the conservative think-tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. Reuters could not independently verify the data.
Western security officials said insurgent forces have captured more than 100 districts, but the Taliban say they have control of more than 200 districts in 34 provinces comprising over half the Central Asian country.
The U.S. military has stopped releasing its tally of Taliban-controlled districts and says that information is now classified. But on Thursday, a Pentagon spokesman acknowledged the Taliban had taken "dozens" of district centers.
Swift gains by the Taliban are putting more strain on Afghan Air Force crews and aircraft to repel the advances, four U.S. officials said.
Even before the latest wave of Taliban offensives, the Afghan Air Force was flying missions at a faster pace than anticipated, piling up maintenance checks that took more planes out of circulation, according to a May report by the Pentagon's Inspector General.
General Austin Miller, the commander of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, warned on June 29 that he was concerned about "overuse" of the Afghan Air Force.
"If you overuse the organizations, it's difficult for them to ... reconstitute," Miller told reporters.
In remarks from the White House on Thursday, Biden said aid to Afghanistan’s military would continue after the U.S. military mission ends on Aug 31. But Biden was hardly optimistic about Afghanistan’s future, casting doubt on the two-decade-old project to preserve a unified, centralized state. Still, he said a Taliban victory was not inevitable.
"I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, which is better trained, better equipped and more competent” than the Taliban, he told reporters.
STAY AND FIGHT?
It wasn't just Taliban death threats against him and his family that drove decorated Afghan helicopter pilot Major Naiem Asadi out of Afghanistan. Asadi said the Afghan Air Force had failed to do enough to protect pilots vulnerable to off-base assassinations.
"They spend a lot of money on (the training) of these pilots, but they can't spend any money on the pilots for their security," Asadi told Reuters in an interview, after arriving in New Jersey in June to start his bid for asylum.
Asadi complained that not all Afghan pilots got paid the same or even regularly. As a member of the ethnic Hazara minority, Asadi believed he was also passed up for promotion.
"They are not taking care of every pilot equally," he said.
The Afghan military did not respond to requests for comment on Asadi’s case. Asadi did not show Reuters documentation to support his discrimination claims.
Experts say the morale of Afghan forces could prove critical in preventing collapse, given the momentum of the Taliban and the perceived weakness of the Afghan central government in key parts of the country.
On Sunday, more than 1,000 Afghan security personnel fled across the border into Tajikistan following Taliban advances in northern Afghanistan. Almost 300 flew back to Afghanistan on Wednesday, and officials in Kabul continue to express confidence in the Afghan security forces.
A review by a U.S. government watchdog found nearly half of all foreign military trainees who went Absent Without Leave (AWOL) while training in the United States since 2005 were from Afghanistan. The Pentagon eventually halted training of Afghan pilots inside the United States.
Niloofar Rahmani, the first female fixed-wing pilot in the Afghan Air Force, won asylum in the United States in 2018 after receiving death threats from the Taliban and others in Afghan society who condemned her for working alongside the U.S. military.
Rahmani, who is now training in Florida to become a flight instructor, said the Afghan government didn't take those threats seriously enough and that even some of her fellow pilots didn't think women should fly. She said she wasn't paid for a year.
Still, the decision to leave Afghanistan wasn’t an easy one.
"It honestly broke my heart, I was depressed for two years just thinking about it," Rahmani said, explaining she felt like she had abandoned her family and what once seemed like a promising military career. She said she feared many pilots would drop out of the force "because of lack of support, because of the threat."
The Afghan military did not respond to a request for comment on Rahmani’s case.
An active-duty Afghan pilot, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity from Afghanistan, said he, too, was trying to figure out a way to flee the country in the face of deteriorating security.
Some are finding the U.S. door shut. Mohd Hamayoun Zarin, a former A-29 pilot, expressed shock that the U.S. Embassy in Kabul rejected his visa request in March.
As an Afghan Air Force veteran who spent years training in America, Zarin is convinced the Taliban will make good on their many threats to kill him and his family now that U.S. troops are leaving.
It would be payback, he says.
"I wasn't dropping flowers on them. These were bombs," Zarin said in an interview, detailing his case publicly for the first time in the hopes that the United States might reconsider.
In its letter to Zarin, viewed by Reuters, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul said he was ineligible for the same visas set aside for interpreters because he did not work directly for the United States, but rather for the Afghan government.
Zarin said that distinction makes little difference on the ground in Afghanistan, where he was known as an English-speaking pilot who spent years training in the United States.
The State Department declined comment on Zarin’s case, saying visa applications are confidential.
TRAINED KILLERS
Masood Atal, a Black Hawk helicopter pilot, was driving on his day off on Dec. 30 to buy fruit for his mother when two motorcycles flanked his gray Toyota Corolla on a Kandahar city highway, one on each side of the car.
Gunmen on the back of both bikes opened fire on Atal, shooting him 11 times, once in the face, six times in his right arm and hand, the rest in his chest, his family said.
Atal had confided to his family that he had received Taliban death threats, the latest in an expletive-laced phone call just two days before he was killed.
"We're killing you," they told him, recounted Bashir Ahmad, one of Atal's brothers.
Atal had asked for bodyguards and a bullet-proof car but the Afghan military turned him down, Ahmad said, accusing it of being "very weak on these things."
An Afghan military spokesman, Sadeq Esa, confirmed Atal had been killed by the Taliban but did not provide further comment about his case.
The Taliban confirmed it killed Atal and said it would do the same to other pilots.
“Targeting those who bombard civilians, who drop blind bombs on civilian houses, is an obligation for us and we will do this,” Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, told Reuters.
For Atal's parents, it was their fifth child killed in the many decades of fighting in Afghanistan. In 1984, during the Soviet occupation, a rocket fired by an anti-Soviet mujahideen landed in front of their children's school in Kandahar, killing another son and three daughters, the family said.
Such crossfire has killed untold numbers of Afghan civilians. But there was nothing indiscriminate about Atal's killing, his family said. The Taliban "are absolutely focusing on the pilots first ... to make the Afghan government vulnerable enough so they can be beaten," said another brother, Waheed.
Catching the killers of Afghan pilots has proven difficult.
A few weeks after the January shooting of Zamaray, the airman shot dead in his realtor's office, Kabul police told the family they had made an arrest. They asked Zamaray's 14-year-old son to identify the suspect.
Glimpsing the detainee at the police station, the teen informed police they had the wrong man. Police tried to convince the boy that the suspect might now look different because he had a broken nose, the family said.
"The police were pushing (Zamaray's) son to identify and implicate the wrong person just to hide their weakness and show an achievement," Darman, Zamaray's brother-in-law, said.
Afghan authorities did not respond to a request for comment on the allegations.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali in Washington, and Hamid Shalizi in Kabul; Editing by Mary Milliken and Marla Dickerson)
Joe Biden on Thursday defended the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, saying it was "not inevitable" that the country would fall to the emboldened Taliban, and confirmed the US exit would be completed by August 31.
But he also admitted that, nearly 20 years after American forces toppled the Taliban regime in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, it was "highly unlikely" Kabul would be able to control the entire country.
The US military has "achieved" its goals in Afghanistan -- killing Osama bin Laden, degrading Al-Qaeda and preventing more attacks on the United States, Biden said in a White House speech.
"We are ending America's longest war," he said, stating that the withdrawal would be completed by August 31 -- earlier than his initial deadline of September 11. The Pentagon has said the exit is already 90 percent complete.
"The status quo is not an option," Biden said of staying in the country. "I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan."
"The United States cannot afford to remain tethered to policies created to respond to a world as it was 20 years ago," he said. "We need to meet the threats where they are today."
Biden said the United States "did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build" and that the Afghan people alone should determine their future.
But he acknowledged the uncertainty about what that future would look like.
Asked if a Taliban takeover was "inevitable," the president said: "No, it is not."
But, he admitted, "the likelihood there is going to be one unified government in Afghanistan controlling the whole country is highly unlikely."
The Taliban claim to have seized more than 100 out of nearly 400 districts in the country.
"The Afghan government... has to come together," Biden said. "They clearly have the capacity to sustain the government in place. The question is, will they generate the kind of cohesion to do it?"
He expressed faith in Afghan forces, who for years have been trained by and received equipment from the United States, against the resurgent Taliban.
"I do not trust the Taliban," Biden said, "but I trust the capacity of the Afghan military."
And he flatly rejected comparisons with the US experience in Vietnam.
"The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army," Biden said. "They're not remotely comparable in terms of capability."
"There's going to be no circumstance where you are going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan," he added. "It is not at all comparable."
The Taliban, for their part, welcomed Biden's statement.
"Any day or hour that US and foreign troops leave earlier is a positive step," spokesman Suhail Shaheen told AFP.
Biden's address came as fighting raged for a second straight day in the capital of Afghanistan's Badghis province, with terrified residents either fleeing or locking themselves inside.
Since the US ramped up its withdrawal the Taliban have launched a blistering campaign to capture new territory, and fears are mounting that Afghan forces will collapse without vital American air support.
Plumes of smoke billowed over Qala-i-Naw, soundtracked by gunfire as the insurgents fought hundreds of Afghan commandos rushed to the city overnight.
Qala-i-Naw resident Aziz Tawakoli said Taliban fighters were still roaming the city.
"You can see them going up and down the streets on their motorcycles," he said.
Badghis health official Abdul Latif Rostaee said at least 10 civilians had been taken to hospital since the fighting erupted.
"Our security forces are bravely fighting them and the enemy is being pushed back," Badghis Governor Hessamuddin Shams told AFP on Thursday.
But Badghis provincial council member Zia Gul Habibi said the Taliban had surrounded the city.
"All districts are under their control... People are really in fear," she said. Afghan civilians have long paid an outsized price in the fighting.
President Ashraf Ghani said the government could handle the situation, but admitted difficulties lay ahead.
"What we are witnessing is one of the most complicated stages of the transition," he said in a speech in Kabul.
"Legitimacy is ours; God is with us."
In London, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said most British troops had left Afghanistan, as part of a NATO withdrawal in parallel to the US pullout.
The Taliban, meanwhile, appear to be pressing for a full military victory.
Supposed peace talks between the insurgents and the government in Doha have largely fizzled out after months of deadlock, and the Taliban have captured dozens of new districts since early May.
On Thursday Shaheen, a member of the negotiating team in Doha, insisted the insurgents still sought a "negotiated settlement."
"We do not believe in monopoly of power," he told AFP.
Human Rights Watch said the insurgents were forcing people from their houses in northern areas that they had captured.
Biden pledged to continue supporting the Afghan government and security forces and said thousands of Afghan translators who worked for US forces would be able to find refuge in the United States.
"There is a home for you in the United States, if you choose," he said. "We will stand with you, just as you stood with us."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Biden administration is considering offering an expedited visa path for vulnerable Afghans including women politicians, journalists, and activists who may become targets of the Taliban, U.S. officials say.
Rights groups have been asking the State Department and White House to add up to 2,000 visas specifically for vulnerable women and women's advocates to a developing policy plan to evacuate thousands Afghans after the U.S. military pullout this month. The current plan https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan-visas-idAFKCN2DR2KG includes translators who worked with foreign forces.
One of the officials said the administration is looking not only at women who are under threat, but also men and minorities in high-risk professions.
Women who made gains during the two-decade U.S. occupation, and their supporters and advocates, should be part of any expedited list, rights groups have argued to the White House and State Department.
"Lives are at risk,” said Teresa Casale, advocacy director for Mina’s List, which advocates for women’s representation in governments around the world. "Women leaders are being actively targeted and killed by Taliban forces. They receive threats against their lives and safety every day."
The group and others are recommending these visas be added to an expedited activation process for Afghan people most at risk, by creating a fast track program in State Department, and that U.S. officials actively pursue diplomacy to other countries as well to secure them.
The White House declined to comment on the push to secure more visas for Afghan women's rights advocates. President Joe Biden will speak Thursday afternoon about the U.S. military's withdrawal, and is expected to mention women's rights.
Women police officers, media workers, judges and medical workers have been assassinated in Afghanistan as foreign military left the country.
Women who appear on television and radio faced particular threats, Human Rights Watch wrote in April. "Female reporters may be targeted not only for issues they cover but also for challenging perceived social norms prohibiting women from being in a public role and working outside the home."
Under the Taliban, women were barred from education or work, required to fully cover their bodies, and could not leave home without a male relative. "Moral offenses" were punished by flogging and stoning.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali, Heather Timmons, Andrea Shalal; Editing by Michael Perry)
The German electoral commission ruled on Thursday that the German Communist Party (DKP) will provisionally not be allowed to participate in the September 26 elections to the federal parliament for failing to meet the necessary formalities.
The DKP, founded in 1968, had lost its status as a political party for repeatedly failing to submit the required statements on its activities to the authorities within the stipulated deadlines, the commission found.
"Deadlines are deadlines," federal election commissioner Georg Thiel said. The DKP, which garnered just 11,558 votes in the proportional count countrywide in 2017 and thus no seats, has four days to appeal the ruling.
The Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD), which secured 29,785 votes in the last elections, has been admitted.
The commission began two days of checking the registration of 87 smaller parties and associations on Thursday to assess whether they meet the legal requirements. Parties passed by the commission still have to submit a stipulated number of signatures from backers.
Under the German electoral system, there is a threshold of 5 per cent to enter parliament that works against minor parties, splinter groups and independents.
Six political groups are represented in the outgoing Bundestag. In order of seats they are: the conservative alliance of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Social Democrats (SPD), the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the liberal FDP, the hard-left Die Linke and the Greens.
(Removes extraneous letter from headline, no changes to text)
TURMUS AYYA, West Bank (Reuters) -Israel drew U.S. criticism on Thursday when it destroyed the family home of a Palestinian-American accused of involvement in a shooting that killed an Israeli and wounded two others in the occupied West Bank.
Muntasir Shalabi was indicted in an Israeli military court over the attack in May near the city of Nablus in which student Yehuda Guetta was shot dead.
After an appeal in an Israeli court by Shalabi's family against the demolition was unsuccessful, the military said, the villa in Turmus Ayya, a village in which many Palestinian-Americans live, was levelled in a controlled explosion.
Israel says such demolitions deter potential Palestinian assailants. Palestinians and rights groups condemn the policy as collective punishment.
In a statement after the home was destroyed, the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem called on "all parties to refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"This certainly includes the punitive demolition of Palestinian homes," a spokesperson said. "As we stated numerous times, the home of an entire family should not be demolished for the actions of one individual."
U.S. criticism of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians was rare during the presidency of Donald Trump, who embraced Israel's settlements - seen by many countries as illegal - in the West Bank. U.S. President Joe Biden has sought to rebuild relations with the Palestinians.
The Israeli prime minister's office declined comment on the embassy's statement.
Shalabi's wife, Sanaa, who lived with three of their children in the home in Turmus Ayya, said she spoke with her husband by telephone on Thursday. She described him as a "resister" and vowed to rebuild the house.
"They want to demoralise us, but we are steadfast. This is the situation of the entire Palestinian people," she said.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with Gaza and East Jerusalem, in a 1967 war. Palestinians seek the territories for a future state.
(Writing by Rami Ayyub, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
The government of Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has decided to impose a coronavirus state of emergency on Tokyo, just two weeks before the start of the Olympic Games.
The state of emergency will be in effect from Monday until August 22 provisionally, the government said on Thursday. The Olympic Games are scheduled to take place from July 23 to August 8.
The reason for the now fourth state of emergency in Tokyo is another significant increase in the number of coronavirus infections.
On Thursday the Tokyo City Council reported 896 new cases of infection, meaning that for each of the past 19 days the number of new infections has exceeded the previous week's figure.
However, the state of emergency is not a lockdown with hard curfews as in other countries. While citizens are called upon to stay at home if possible, restaurants are open but not allowed to serve alcohol, offer karaoke and have to close earlier than normal in the evening.
Many people in Japan fear that the Games could become a "superspreader" event.
Japan's Olympic organizers and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have always stressed that everything will be "safe," but possibly without spectators.
Japan's organizers want to make a decision on this with the central government, the Tokyo city government as well as the IOC and the Paralympic Committee, according to the media on Thursday.
Three rockets were fired at the US embassy in Iraq early Thursday, the Iraqi army said, at the end of a day marked by rocket and drone attacks on bases hosting American forces in Iraq and Syria.
The embassy itself was not hit, the army said, but three nearby places in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone were.
A spate of recent attacks on US military and diplomatic facilities in Iraq has been blamed on pro-Iranian armed groups within a state-sponsored paramilitary force.
US forces, who have 2,500 troops deployed in Iraq as part of an international anti-Islamic State group coalition, have been targeted almost 50 times this year in the country, but the last few days have seen an increase in the frequency of attacks.
On Wednesday, fourteen rockets were fired at an air base hosting American troops in the western province of Anbar, causing minor injuries to two personnel, the coalition said.
A Shiite militant group called Revenge of al-Muhandis Brigade claimed responsibility and vowed to defeat the "brutal occupation", according to the US-based SITE intelligence group, which monitors extremist groups.
The militant group is named after Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis of Iraq's Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary alliance, who was killed in a US drone strike early last year along with the revered Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, SITE said.
Late last month, the United States carried out air strikes against pro-Iran fighters in both Iraq and Syria.
The rockets on Wednesday "landed on the base & perimeter" of the Ain al-Assad base, coalition spokesman Wayne Marotto tweeted, adding that local homes and a mosque were also damaged.
Iraqi security forces said the rocket launcher had been hidden inside a truck carrying bags of flour.
Similar attacks happened earlier this week.
On Monday night, US forces shot down an armed drone above the embassy, according to Iraqi security officials.
American defence systems fired rockets into the air in the capital, said AFP reporters, with Iraqi security sources saying the salvos had taken out an explosive-laden drone.
Just hours earlier, rockets had also been fired towards Ain al-Assad.
Asked about the renewed violence, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters: "These attacks reflect and are representative of the threat that Iran-backed militias present fundamentally to Iraq's sovereignty and to Iraq's stability."
Across the border in Syria, where pro-Iran fighters have fought alongside the Damascus regime in the decade-old civil war, Kurdish-led forces also reported attempted attacks near a coalition base.
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said they repelled drone attacks near the base in the Omar oil field in the country's east, in the second such operation in days.
"Our frontline forces against IS and coalition forces in the area of the Omar oil field dealt with drone attacks," it said, adding that the drones had caused no damage.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor with sources inside Syria, said pro-Iran militias had probably launched the drones from a rural area outside the town of Al-Mayadeen southwest of the oil field.
It was the second such attack in days, after the SDF reported "two unidentified rocket-propelled grenades landed on the western side of the al-Omar oil field" late Sunday, which caused no casualties.
Pro-Iranian militias also fired several shells at Al-Omar on Monday last week, causing damage but no casualties, the Observatory said.
The United States had launched air strikes the previous night against three targets it said were used by pro-Iran groups in eastern Syria and western Iraq.
The Observatory said at least five "Iran-backed Iraqi militia fighters" were killed in the strikes on the Syrian side of the border.
The global Covid-19 death toll has crossed four million, with the worst of the pandemic only just starting to hit some parts of the Asia-Pacific and cases rising again in the United States.
The more infectious Delta virus variant is accelerating outbreaks, and while some nations have started easing restrictions, the World Health Organization warned the world was at a "perilous point".
With fears growing about the spread of the virus, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced Thursday that the capital Tokyo will be under a state of emergency throughout the Olympics.
"The more infectious Delta variant now accounts for around 30 percent of cases," Japan's virus response minister Yasutoshi Nishimura had said before the emergency announcement.
The emergency will run until August 22, but it will be far looser than the lockdowns seen in other parts of the world such as Australia.
The government there said Thursday it will rush 300,000 vaccine doses to Sydney as Australia's largest city -- in its third week of lockdown -- struggled to bring a Delta outbreak under control.
South Korea, once considered a coronavirus response model, reported nearly 1,300 new infections on Thursday, the highest since the pandemic began.
The surge has forced South Korean authorities to consider imposing the tightest restrictions, under which all public events would be banned.
Elsewhere in Asia, Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City has gone into lockdown. The virus threat also forced organisers Thursday to postpone the Southeast Asian Games that were due to be held in Vietnam.
But the worst of the Asian outbreaks is in Indonesia, which has become a global hotspot with death rates rising tenfold in a month to more than 1,000 on Wednesday.
Hospitals in the vast archipelago of 270 million have been pushed to the brink by the flood of coronavirus cases.
The WHO announced Wednesday that more than four million people have died from Covid-19, but cautioned that the figure was an underestimate of the true toll.
And while many wealthy nations, spurred by rapid vaccination programmes, have started easing and even entirely eliminating restrictions, the WHO urged "extreme caution".
"The world is at a perilous point in this pandemic," said the UN body's chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, accusing rich countries of hoarding vaccines and of acting "as though the pandemic is already over".
The Covid-19 challenge has been further complicated in recent weeks by the rise of the Delta variant, which was first detected in India.
In Brazil, which has the world's second-highest known Covid-19 death toll, authorities said Wednesday that the variant has started spreading rapidly in the country's most populous state Sao Paulo.
"It is already circulating in our midst in people who has no travel history or who have no contact with someone who has been, for example, in India," said Sao Paulo health secretary Jean Gorinchteyn.
"We have to pay special attention."
The Delta variant has also caused a spike in Covid-19 cases in the United States, which has the world's highest availability of vaccines.
But its once-rapid immunisation campaign has dropped off steeply since April.
The seven-day average of new cases rose 21 percent compared with two weeks ago, Centers for Disease Control data showed Wednesday.
Regions in the Midwest and South with lower vaccination rates are experiencing higher case rates than regions with high vaccination rates such as the Northeast.
Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security told AFP that the likely trend now is that Covid-19 will be more of a problem in areas where vaccinations are low.
"In other parts of the country, the pandemic is largely going to be something that's managed as more of an ordinary respiratory virus."
One such area is New York City, where on Wednesday a ticker-tape parade honoured the everyday "heroes" who kept the city running through the pandemic.
Between marching bands and under confetti, groups of doctors, caregivers, delivery men, public transport workers and food bank employees and others marched as onlookers cheered.
"It's a trauma we've all kind of gone through," said New York resident Sara Cavolo.
"It really hits home the fact that now we're coming back out of this and reemerging, we've made it. It feels just very good to celebrate."
Top US officials met at the White House on stopping ransomware Wednesday, as pressure mounted on President Joe Biden to take action against Russia over cyberattacks.
Days after hundreds of companies in the US and around 1,500 worldwide saw their computer systems hijacked by allegedly Russia-based ransomware group REvil, there were calls for tough counterattacks by the Pentagon's cyber warriors and more sanctions on Moscow.
The White House meeting, including officials from the State Department, Homeland Security, Justice Department and intelligence, also followed news that alleged Russian hackers had attempted to break into the systems of the Republican Party's national committee.
After the meeting, Biden told reporters he would be sending a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the issue, without offering any details.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the meeting Wednesday was on a "whole-of-government effort to address ransomware attacks."
"The president has a range of options should he determine to take action" against attackers, she added.
Psaki would not say what steps Biden is considering.
But as the attacks continued three weeks after he raised the ransomware issue in direct talks with Putin at a Geneva summit, there were more calls for the US leader to retaliate.
In a Washington Post opinion piece Wednesday, cybersecurity expert Dmitri Alperovitch and Wilson Center Russia expert Matthew Rojansky urged Biden to sanction Russian oil and gas companies, a top source of Moscow's finances.
"Before such devastating ransomware attacks become a routine occurrence, President Biden must deliver a quiet but forceful demand: Russian President Vladimir Putin must put an immediate stop to this activity or Washington will tighten the squeeze of sanctions on the Russian economy," they wrote.
A group of House Republicans said in a statement that continued cyber-attacks make it clear Putin has "brushed off" Biden's warnings.
"Putin won't stop these criminals unless he knows he'll face real and severe consequences if he doesn't," they said.
Psaki said senior White House national security staff had communicated their concern to high-level Russian officials.
And US and Russian cybersecurity officials are scheduled to meet next week on the ransomware problem.
But the most recent REvil attack suggested Moscow has not taken action to reign in cyber criminals.
On Wednesday on their "Happy Blog" on the dark web, REvil continued to release private data of companies whose computers they took over to pressure them to pay ransom.
The group has also offered to publicly release the key for unlocking all of the companies' data in return for a single payment of $70 million.
Asked about retaliating, Psaki said officials are still cautious about attributing blame for the most recent attacks, and were not saying the Russian government was directly responsible.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday they would not talk about the specific capabilities or actions of their Cyber Command, which can undertake offensive and retaliatory attacks online.
"We are all mindful of these growing threats to national security as well as to civilian infrastructure," Kirby said.
"We believe... a US response to those threats has got to be whole-of-government" and not just a military responsibility, he added.
There has never been a better time for women to enter the film industry, American superstar Jodie Foster told the Cannes festival on Wednesday, saying movies had too long been starved of female perspectives.
Addressing a large crowd of mostly young festival-goers in near-fluent French, she encouraged budding women filmmakers to seek their own truth and not try to please others.
"This is the moment for women to enter the industry," Foster said.
Although male domination of the industry had "not changed completely," she said, "there is now an awareness that it's been too long that we haven't heard stories told by women... This is the moment."
Foster received a lifetime achievement on Tuesday for her work that has included star turns in "Taxi Driver" and "Bugsy Malone" when she was a child, through to her Oscar-winning role in "Silence of the Lambs". She has also directed several films, including "Money Monster" with George Clooney and Julia Roberts.
"I know it's a bit cliche to say 'tell your own stories'," Foster said. "But what I mean is: ask yourself questions about the truthfulness of things and whether they resonate within you, instead of pleasing others, be it the public or producers."
- 'Worst reason' -
Foster said many young actors entered the movie business saying "I want to be looked at in my pretty clothes" which she said was the "worst reason" for taking up the profession.
"For some people it can take years, unfortunately, to cast off that armour that separates you from authenticity on the screen," she said.
Talking about her own experience, Foster said Pedro Almodovar -- who presented her with her honorary Palme the day before -- was "the first feminist director for me".
"It was the first time I'd seen films that talked about women in an authentic way," she said of the legendary Spanish director, who has made women central to many of his films.
Foster called Almodovar an exception among male directors who "can't easily transpose themselves into a woman's body and ask themselves what the complicated and complex experience of a woman consists of."
- Male 'confusion' -
Referring to her experience as a director, she said that there was still "confusion" in the male-dominated movie industry about how women exercise leadership positions.
"They don't understand how women lead because they've never seen women lead," she said of male producers.
"They don't know how to talk to women to convince them of something. They're afraid because they don't know how to deal with these situations."
The Cannes film festival has raised eyebrows for including just four films by women directors in the list of 24 movies vying for the top Palme d'Or prize in the main competition.
The gender balance is tilted less towards men in the festival's other competition categories, and the main jury this year is mostly female, including US star Maggie Gyllenhaal, Canadian-French singer Mylene Farmer and French-Senegalese director Mati Diop.
Only one woman has won the Palme d'Or in 73 editions of the festival -- Jane Campion for "The Piano" in 1993.
© 2021 AFP
This is a breaking news story... Check back for possible updates...
Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated early Wednesday morning after what initial news reports described as "a group of unidentified people" attacked his home on the outskirts of the nation's capital of Port-au-Prince.
Haiti's First Lady, Martine Moïse, was reportedly hospitalized after suffering bullet wounds in the attack, which the Haitian Embassy in Canada confirmed on Twitter.
Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph "said he was now in charge of the country," France 24 reported.
In a statement, Joseph called the attack a "hateful, inhumane, and barbaric act."
"A group of unidentified individuals, some of them speaking Spanish, attacked the private residence of the president of the republic and thus fatally wounded the head of state," the prime minister said. "The country's security situation is under the control of the Haitian police and the armed forces of Haiti."
The Miami Herald reported Wednesday that "the assailants claimed to be agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, according to videos taken by people in the area of the president's home."
The newspaper continued:
On the videos, someone with an American accent is heard saying in English over a megaphone, "DEA operation. Everybody stand down. DEA operation. Everybody back up, stand down."
Sources said the assailants, one of whom spoke in English with an American accent, were not with the DEA.
"These were mercenaries," a high-ranking Haitian government official said.
In an appearance on Democracy Now! Wednesday morning, Haiti Liberté journalist Kim Ives said that while it is not yet clear who was behind the killing, "clearly this was a fairly sophisticated operation."
The assassination came amid widespread street protests against the Moïse government, which has faced accusations of corruption and rampant abuses of power. Moïse, who was backed by the United States, dissolved the Haitian parliament early last year and has been ruling by decree ever since.
"Even before the unrest, the president did not have a wide public mandate," the New York Times noted. "He won the 2016 election with just under 600,000 votes in a country of 11 million. Critics accused him of becoming more autocratic as he pressed ahead with an aggressive agenda that included rewriting the country's Constitution. Among the provisions he was pushing for was one that would grant Haiti's leader immunity for any actions while in office."
A small pen-and-ink drawing attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which lay buried unrecognized in a box for decades, is at the centre of a battle between its owner and France's culture ministry that will play out in a Paris court on Wednesday.
The court will begin hearing if the the drawing of a martyred Saint Sebastian lashed to a tree is allowed to leave France for eventual purchase by a foreign buyer.
The piece was among several drawings and engravings that Jean B., the owner, who is in his 80s and has asked not to be fully named, received as a gift from his father for passing his medical school exams in 1959.
Being more of a rock enthusiast than an art lover at the time, the young doctor put it aside and promptly forget about it for over half a century.
Stumbling across the box of drawings again during a move in 2016 he decided to give them to the Tajan auction house to have them valued.
The head of Tajan's Old Masters department, Thaddee Prate, quickly identified the hand of a master, without specifying who, and valued it at between 20,000 and 30,000 euros ($17,000-$25,000).
If Jean B. thought he was lucky then, he was about to become far more fortunate.
Another expert, Patrick de Bayser, concluded that the two-sided drawing -- the other side is inscribed with scientific studies of candle light -- was by none other than Leonardo, an opinion backed by a third specialist, Carmen Bambach of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
"The attribution of the St. Sebastian drawing to Leonardo is absolutely solid," she told The New York Times, noting that it was complementary to other drawings of Saint Sebastian by the artist.
- A 'national treasure' -
In an instant, the work's estimated value rocketed, reaching between 8 and 12 million euros ($6.75 million-$10 million).
But it's not every day that a new Leonardo turns up and the French government soon stepped in, designating the drawing a "national treasure" and giving itself 30 months to acquire it on behalf of the Louvre museum in Paris, home of the Mona Lisa.
An offer from the state duly followed -- 10 million euros -- but with a new valuation estimating the drawing at 15 million euros, Jean B. refused and the culture ministry threw in the towel.
But the affair did not end there.
Jean B. promptly applied for an export permit to be able to sell the drawing to a foreign buyer but the culture ministry refused, claiming that the drawing may in fact have been stolen.
On Wednesday, the retired doctor will ask a Paris court to order Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot and a senior official in charge of art collections to allow the drawing to leave France.
- After the Salvator Mundi –
Jean B.'s lawyer Olivier Baratelli termed the government's handling of the painting's discovery as "catastrophic".
"A culture ministry worthy of its name would have ensured the French state acquire such a drawing," he argued.
Meanwhile Jean B. has also fallen out with Tajan.
Saying he learned through the press of their plans to put the drawing up for auction without his consent he revoked their sale mandate.
Baratelli claimed that Tajan had been "intoxicated" by the prospect of a hefty commission after the sale of "Salvator Mundi" attributed to Leonardo which set a record for the most expensive painting ever sold at auction in 2017 when it was acquired by the Saudi royal family for $450 million at Christie's.
Tajan, for its part, has sued the drawing's owner for 2 million euros for breach of contract, asking that he compensate the auction house for all the work it has carried out on his behalf.
© 2021 AFP
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