World News

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/21976398

By Sharon Zhang, Truthout
Published October 30, 2024

Ukraine's U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya responded: "None of the countries that provide assistance to Ukraine is under Security Council sanctions." "Receiving assistance from the fully-sanctioned North Korea is a brazen violation of the U.N. Charter," he added. "Sending the DPRK troops to support Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine is a flagrant violation of international law."

The United States imposed sanctions on October 30 against almost 400 entities and individuals in more than a dozen countries that Washington says have been supplying Russia with advanced technology used in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The sanctions and other restrictions were announced simultaneously in statements released by the U.S. Treasury, State, and Commerce departments. The Treasury Department imposed sanctions on 274 targets, while the State Department designated more than 120 and the Commerce Department added 40 companies and research institutions to a trade restriction list.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/21969829

US State Department officials have identified nearly 500 potential incidents of civilians being harmed by US-supplied weapons during Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, Reuters has reported.

However, no further action has been taken on any of them, three sources, including a US official familiar with the matter, said this week.

The Tokyo High Court ruled on Wednesday that Japanese laws that do not recognize same-sex marriages violate the country's Constitution. This is the second time a high court in the country has handed down such a decision.

A UN committee has urged Peru to compensate women who were forcibly sterilised in the 1990s, ruling that the state policy could constitute a “crime against humanity”.

Forced sterilisation was part of a programme implemented by Peru’s then president Alberto Fujimori during the final four years before he left office in 2000 after a decade in power.

The United Nations committee on the elimination of discrimination against women said hundreds of thousands of people had been affected. The 23-member committee issued its finding after reviewing a joint complaint filed by five victims who were forcibly sterilised between 1996 and 1997. “The victims claimed that the forced sterilisations they underwent had severe and permanent consequences for their physical and mental health,” it said in a statement.

The experts denounced Peru’s failure to properly investigate the violations and compensate the victims, urging the country to put in place a “comprehensive reparation programme for victims”.

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North Korean troops wearing Russian uniforms and carrying Russian equipment are moving to the Russian region of Kursk, near Ukraine, according to the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, who described the deployment as a dangerous and destabilising development.

Austin was speaking at a press conference at the Pentagon with the South Korean defence minister, Kim Yong-hyun, as concerns grow about Pyongyang’s deployment of as many as 11,000 troops to Russia. The US and South Korea said some of the North Korean troops are heading to Kursk, on the border with Ukraine, where the Kremlin’s forces have struggled to push back a Ukrainian incursion.

Austin said “the likelihood is pretty high” that Russia will use the North Korean troops in combat. He added that officials were discussing what to do about the deployment, which he said had the potential to broaden or lengthen the conflict in Ukraine. Asked if it could prompt other nations to get more directly involved in the conflict, he acknowledged that it could “encourage others to take action”.

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US state department officials have identified nearly 500 potential incidents of civilian harm during Israel’s military operations in Gaza involving US-furnished weapons, but have not taken further action on any of them, according to three sources, including a US official familiar with the matter.

The incidents – some of which may have violated international humanitarian law, according to the sources – have been recorded since 7 October 2023, when the Gaza war started. They are being collected by the state department’s Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance (CHIRG), a formal mechanism for tracking and assessing any reported misuse of US-origin weapons.

. . .

The mechanism, which was established in August 2023 to be applied to all countries that receive US arms, has three stages: incident analysis, policy impact assessment and coordinated department action.

None of the Gaza cases had yet reached the third stage of action, said a former US official familiar with the matter.

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A journalist was shot dead Tuesday night in western Mexico, a local prosecutor's office said, in a part of the country hit hard by drug cartel violence.

Mauricio Cruz Solis, a host on local radio station La Poderosa Uruapan who also published news on the Minuto x Minuto outlet, was killed in the city of Uruapan in the western state of Michoacán.

One other person was wounded in the attack, the prosecutor's office said.

The radio station where Cruz Solis worked mourned his killing in a statement published on social media.

"Mauricio was more than a colleague, he was an unconditional friend, a source of inspiration and a tireless voice in the service of our community," the station said. "We will always remember you Mauricio. Thank you for all that you shared with us."

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At least 1,085 buildings have been destroyed or badly damaged since Israel’s invasion targeting the Hezbollah militia, including many in controlled demolitions, a New York Times analysis shows.

Satellite imagery and videos show widespread destruction in six villages along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, revealing 1,085 buildings that have been leveled or badly damaged since its Oct. 1 invasion aimed at crippling the militant group Hezbollah.

Earlier this month, The New York Times, using satellite imagery, verified the destruction of scores of buildings in two other villages.

The images offer only a glimpse at the situation in southern Lebanon. There has been little access to the area since the invasion began and the extent of the damage is unclear.

. . .

According to The Times’s latest analysis, one village, Mhaibib, appears to have been virtually flattened, with only a handful of buildings still standing. In five other villages and towns, entire neighborhoods were reduced to rubble.

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Death toll is expected to rise as search continues for missing people, with residents urged to stay off roads

At least 63 people are feared to have died after torrential rains hit southern and eastern Spain on Tuesday, bringing flash floods that raged through towns and cut off roads and railway lines.

As the search continued for the missing, people were urged to stay off the roads and away from swollen rivers amid warnings that the severe weather was not over and that the number of fatalities could still rise.

The Valencian government’s emergency coordination centre said its multiple victims protocol had been activated, adding that the latest number of known fatalities in the region was 62.

Facing a shortage of planes due to Western sanctions, Russia is in talks with some Central Asian countries for their airlines to run domestic flights and help meet a pick up in travel demand.

Russian airlines, which use many Western aircraft delivered before the war in Ukraine, are struggling to meet growing demand for air travel as sanctions hinder access to parts and domestic production takes time to ramp up.

Transport Minister Roman Starovoit said last week Russia was in talks with so-called "friendly" countries, including Kazakhstan, about foreign airlines operating domestic flights, Russian news agencies reported.

Russia has also approached Uzbekistan, which is considering the proposal, an Uzbek government source told Reuters.

Wikipedia is embroiled in a major legal battle in India that experts say could impact how the online encyclopedia functions in the country.

The battle stems from a 20m rupee ($237,874; £183,012) lawsuit filed by India’s largest newswire service against Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, for allegedly publishing defamatory content against it. 

In the lawsuit in the Delhi high court, Asian News International (ANI) said a paragraph in its description on Wikipedia falsely accuses it of being "a propaganda tool for the incumbent [federal] government” and of "distributing material from fake news websites" and demanded the page be taken down.

Wikipedia says the content on the website is completely managed by volunteers and that the Foundation has no control over it.

In August, the court ordered Wikipedia to disclose who made these allegedly defamatory edits to the ANI page - and threatened to shut down the website if it didn't comply with its orders.

Two women were removed from a British Airways flight at Heathrow after an altercation reportedly provoked by a Make America Great Again (Maga) cap.

The incident occurred on Saturday as the women, aged 40 and 60, were preparing to board a flight bound for Austin, Texas.

Witnesses said that one woman took offence at her fellow passenger’s red Maga hat, worn by supporters of the former US president Donald Trump, and asked that it be removed, the Sun reported.

Punches were allegedly exchanged between the two women, both booked to fly in premium economy, before they ended up squaring up to one another in the cabin. When the captain called for assistance, police arrived at the scene to escort the passengers from the aircraft.