Israel’s air strike killed 13 Palestinian civilians including three top commanders of the militant group Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip.
The strikes took place in the wee hours of Tuesday when 40 Israeli warplanes and helicopters attacked several places across the Gaza strip, the deadly strike hit homes and created a panic situation among residents.
Following the air strikes, Palestinian health officials confirmed that eight women and children were among the dead people and another had received severe injuries.
“Four children and four women were among those killed in the strike. most of the injured were women and children and many were in critical condition in hospital,” officials added.
Meanwhile, Israel issued a statement and claimed that they had only targeted militants who pose an imminent threat to their citizens.
Israel further stated that Islamic Jihad is a vindictive group and is expected to respond with rocket fire into Israel.
Reports suggested that at least two apartments with their fronts collided down strongly.
Russian representative office located in Palestinian territories announced a Russian citizen named Dr Jamal Khuswan, a former chairman of the Gaza Dentists Association, was also killed in the strike along with his wife and son.
As per BBC reports, Mohammed Khuswan was a prominent dentist and during the Isreal strike, he and his family were inside their home when it was hit by a missile.
Meanwhile, Islamic Jihad’s military wing, the al-Quds Brigades, confirmed the deaths of three of its
Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad group confirmed the death of three commanders along with their wives and children.
They identified them as Jihad Shaker al-Ghannam (secretary of the al-Quds Brigades’ Military Council), Khalil Salah al-Bahtini (the commander of its Northern Region) and Tariq Mohammed Ezzedine (head of the military action in the occupied West Bank).
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denied the accusation, and U.S. officials said they had no advanced knowledge of the attacks. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that he’d take any claims coming from the Kremlin with a “large shaker of salt.”
“We don’t attack Putin or Moscow,” Zelenskyy told the Nordic broadcaster TV2 during a trip to Finland on Wednesday. “We fight on our territory. We’re defending our villages and cities. We don’t have enough weapons for these.”
Peskov reportedly said during a press conference earlier Thursday that “attempts to disown this, both in Kyiv and in Washington, are, of course, absolutely ridiculous. We know very well that decisions about such actions, about such terrorist attacks, are made not in Kyiv but in Washington.
“Kyiv only does what it is told to do,” Peskov said.
Kirby said on MSNBC that the U.S. doesn’t encourage or enable Ukraine to strike within Russian borders, saying that “we certainly don’t dictate the terms by which they defend themselves or the operations they conduct.”
Senior administration officials told POLITICO Wednesday they are working to confirm whether the suspected strike was ordered by Kyiv, conducted by a rogue pro-Ukraine group, or a false flag operation by Russia.
During a surprise trip to the Netherlands on Thursday, Zelenskyy reiterated his plea for a special tribunal to hold Putin accountable for war crimes.
“We all want to see a different Vladimir here in The Hague,” Zelenskyy said. “The one who deserves to be sentenced for these criminal actions right here, in the capital of international law.”
The International Criminal Court, which is based in the Hague, in March issued an international arrest warrant against Putin over the forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia since the war began. While the court doesn’t have the authority to prosecute the crime of aggression, Zelenskyy said the rules need to change.
“If we want true justice, we should not look for excuses and should not refer to the shortcomings of the current international law but make bold decisions that will correct that shortcomings that unfortunately exist in international law,” Zelenskyy said in a speech.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The Russian attack killed Veronika in her bed on Friday morning, but left her childish chalk drawings of a happy family intact on the wall of their home.
Portraits of “Mama”, “Nika” (her nickname), her uncles, grandparents and even the family cat “Kuzia” – the names written in by an adult – stretch all along the front of the house.
They end only where the plaster was stripped off by an explosion and a fire that took the lives of the three-year-old and her mother, early on Friday morning.
Hours later, Kuzia the cat looked on, bewildered and bedraggled by a steady rain, as “Uncle Seriozha” from the wall drawings tried to sort through the charred wreckage of their single-storey home. He hurled fragments of twisted metal out into the yard, sidestepping a doll thrown to the floor by the blast.
He had been inside too last night, he said, sleeping in the room next to the one that took a direct hit. His parents-in-law are in hospital. His wife, Veronika’s maternal aunt, wandered around the house and yard, silenced by the scale of the tragedy.
Neighbours were stunned at how brutally Russia’s invasion had arrived in this semi-rural suburb of Dnipro. The river port is an industrial and military hub, “closed” to foreigners under the Soviet Union, and a target in repeated wars.
But Veronika’s family home was a long drive from the river, the docks and the factories, in an area where fruit trees in full blossom shade small vegetable patches outside village homes, and rows of tulips brighten muddy lanes.
“Its the first time we’ve had an attack here. We already thought the war was something far away, that wasn’t going to affect us directly,” said Olha, 68, a friend of “grandpa Vova” from the paintings, who was injured.
The inside of Veronika’s house. Photograph: Emre Çaylak/The Guardian
She works in a shop, and said on Friday morning soldiers who stopped by for supplies told her they had removed an unexploded missile fragment from the damaged house.
That matched the damage to the house, where one wall was missing and there had been a fierce fire, but several walls and windows were still intact. There was no crater, which a cruise missile striking such a small house would be likely to leave behind.
A few hundred metres away, some other piece of falling weaponry had hit the high roof and gables of another house. The gaping holes and black fire damage were visible across a field from Veronika’s home.
Oleksandr Kalinichenko looking at the destroyed house. Photograph: Emre Çaylak/The Guardian
Oleksandr Kalinichenko, a neighbour who lives around 300 metres away, said he had ignored air raid sirens until he saw the flash of an explosion. “My wife shouted at me: get into the shelter, immediately,” he said. “At first I thought it was some way away.”
He crawled into the basement, and when he came out, two young neighbours had been killed. “I want to tell you the Russians are pissing us off. I am 70 years old but I want to volunteer for the army, I want to strangle them with my own hands.”
Serhii Lysak, the head of the military administration for the Dnipro region, visited the shattered house to inspect the damage.
“Today we don’t need other proof to show the terrorist activity of the Russian federation. You can see what they have done,” he said, standing in front of Nika’s family portraits.
Veronika’s house in Dnipro Photograph: Emre Çaylak/The Guardian
The young family had only become targets of a Russian strike because they were trying to protect themselves from missiles, said one neighbour, who asked not to be named.
They moved into the suburban house from their own apartment in the city, after a bloody strike on a Dnipro high-rise apartment building in January. The deadliest single assault on the city during this war, the missile killed at least 40 people and injured dozens more.
A similar tragedy unfolded in the central city of Uman on Friday, where another missile slipped through air defences and destroyed much of an apartment building, killing at least 10 people. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has begged his allies for more anti-aircraft missiles, warning that the country’s supplies are running low.
The disaster in Uman shows the risks to civilians if air defences fail. But even when they work, Veronika’s death, in a place her family took her for protection, is a reminder that nowhere is entirely safe in a country at war.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Hyderabad: The menace of bike races and stunts is back on the Chanchalguda – Malakpet road striking fear in the common road commuters during morning hours.
On Sunday, a group of youngsters were spotted driving scooters and motorcycles at high speed and performing dangerous stunts like wheeling.
Some road users captured the acrobatics of the youngsters on their mobile phones and shared in social media terming it as an act of ‘stupidity in Ramzan’.
Sources said the youngsters from Yakutpura, Dabeerpura, Malakpet, Chaderghat, Edi Bazaar, Madannapet and Noor Khan Bazaar are gathering on the road and performing all dangerous stunts.
“It is very scary. A slight misjudgment or mistake could lead to harm for other motorists. Such mindless acts should not be allowed on the roads,” Abdul Shukhoor, a teacher from Chanchalguda appealed to the Hyderabad police.
The videos went viral on social media and some citizens tagged it to Hyderabad police who assured to take strict action.
SRINAGAR: On Tuesday, due to an avalanche near Zojila Pass in Ganderbal district of central Kashmir, the Srinagar-Leh highway had to be closed for traffic.
As per an official statement, following recent snowfall in the area, avalanches struck near Panimatha and Kai-Pathri on Zojila Pass. The official added that efforts are underway to clear the road with the help of men and machinery.
In light of the snowfall and avalanches in several locations on Zojila axis, upward traffic was not permitted on the day in question, the official confirmed .(KNO)
Lahore: A high court in Pakistan on Thursday struck down a colonial-era sedition law that criminalised criticism of the federal and provincial governments, terming it inconsistent with the Constitution.
Justice Shahid Karim of the Lahore High Court (LHC) annulled Section 124-A of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) dealing with sedition, the Dawn newspaper reported.
Justice Karim pronounced the verdict in response to identical petitions seeking to annul the sedition law, the paper said.
One of the petitions, filed by a citizen named Haroon Farooq, which was identical to all other pleas urged the court to declare Section 124-A of the PPC as “ultra-vires in terms of Article 8 of the Constitution being inconsistent with and in derogation of fundamental rights provided under Article 9, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 19, 19A of the Constitution”.
The law states: “Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards, the Federal or Provincial Government established by law shall be punished with imprisonment for life to which fine may be added, or with imprisonment which may extend to three years, to which fine may be added, or with fine.”
It was argued in the petition that the sedition act was enacted in 1860 which is a sign of British colonial rule, Geo News reported.
The petition added that this law was used for slaves under which a case can be registered at anyone’s request.
It was stated in the petition that the Constitution of Pakistan gives every citizen the right to freedom of expression but still, Section 124-A is imposed for making speeches against the rulers.
According to the petition, the law has been recklessly used in Pakistan as a tool of exploitation to curb the right to free speech and expression guaranteed under Article 19 of the Constitution.
The petition said the law was serving as “a notorious tool for the suppression of dissent, free speech and criticism in free and independent Pakistan”.
Over the past few years, the petition argued, various politicians, journalists and activists had been booked under Section 124-A.
The employers and individuals had standing to sue, O’Connor wrote, because “compulsory coverage for those services violates their religious beliefs by making them complicit in facilitating homosexual behavior, drug use, and sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman.”
The employers argued that recommendations made by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force can’t be enforced because its members are private medical experts who advise the government, not government employees.
“The Appointments Clause says major policy decisions have to be made by an ‘officer of the United States,’ and can’t be made by just somebody off the street,” explained Nicholas Bagley, a professor at the University of Michigan whose research focuses on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
Judge O’Connor agreed, in part, but did not grant two other requests — one based on religious rights and another based on secular cost concerns — to block the ACA’s contraception mandate. The challengers have said they plan to appeal that decision.
The decision also does not affect access to free vaccines, which are covered under a different piece of the law.
The ruling comes four years after the same judge found all of Obamacare unconstitutional, a decision that was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. It is also the latest salvo in a years-long fight by conservatives to undo the former president’s signature health law by chipping away at its requirements.
The Biden administration, which is expected to appeal to the conservative leaning 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, made several arguments in defense of the landmark health reform law that the judge dismissed, including that the accessibility of PrEP and other sexual health preventive services is key to the fight against the spread of HIV, particularly after the country lost ground on testing and treating patients during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Though he acknowledged that there is a “compelling government interest in inhibiting the spread of a potentially fatal infectious disease like HIV,” O’Connor said the government does not have to compel private insurance companies to cover drugs like PrEP in order to achieve its public health aims.
O’Connor also rejected the DOJ’s argument that the challengers can’t prove they were harmed by the preventive care mandate and thus don’t have standing to sue.
The decision notes that when Biden administration attorneys asked the challengers how much more the coverage of preventive services increased their insurance premiums, “Plaintiffs responded that they could not quantify the increased costs, but that they knew their premiums had become too expensive to afford.”
O’Connor had already sided with the challengers on preventive care and PrEP in September, but had not said whether his ruling would apply only to the people suing, to everyone in Texas, or nationwide, and requested a further briefing. O’Connor ultimately granted the pleas for a “universal” ruling, potentially upending the national insurance market.
While 15 states require insurance companies to cover these types of preventive services regardless of federal law, those rules don’t apply to self-insured employer plans, which cover most people who have private insurance.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday that the Justice and Health Departments are reviewing the decision and said the administration sees it “yet another attack on the Affordable Care Act” and “yet another attack on the ability of Americans to make their own health care choices.”
Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill pleaded with the administration to swiftly appeal what they called a “reckless decision,” warning that it “will put lives at risk if people are forced to forgo routine screenings and treatment.”
“I am also calling on all health care insurers to commit to continuing to cover all preventive services without cost-sharing while this case is litigated and until final disposition of the lawsuit,” said Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) ranking member of the Energy and Commerce committee.
Health insurance experts say that while the ruling is unlikely to have an immediate effect, patients could be deterred from seeking out services for fear of being hit with a medical bill.
“Most insurance plans are locked in through the end of the year and thus the impacts would not be felt immediately, but that doesn’t apply universally,” cautioned Bagley. “There’s a ton of uncertainty.”
Congress, he added, could easily rectify the situation with a one-line bill saying: “Whatever the USPTF recommends has to be covered, subject to approval by the HHS Secretary.” But prospects for passage are grim with the House currently under GOP control.
The case could ultimately reach the Supreme Court, which has upheld the Affordable Care Act multiple times but chipped away at significant portions of the law, including its contraception coverage requirements and Medicaid expansion.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Republicans, however, said the move would backfire by discouraging employers from locating or expanding in the state.
“Dramatically transforming our policies to harm workers and job providers will hang a ‘Closed for Business’ sign at our state’s borders and take Michigan off the list for future projects,” House Republican Leader Matt Hall said in a statement earlier this week during the vote on final passage.
The anti-union law’s repeal is a particularly significant symbolic victory given the special place Michigan holds in the organized labor movement.
“For us, being the home of labor and getting attacked 10 years ago was a gut punch to workers across Michigan,” state Sen. Darrin Camilleri, the sponsor of MI SB34 (23R), told POLITICO. “We are a state so steeped in union activism and union history that we knew this was a policy that our constituents wanted for the last 10 years as well.”
Even with the move, more than half the states in the country have right-to-work laws on the books. The Michigan Legislature’s repeal is the first since Indiana did so in 1965, before reverting in 2012. (Missouri voters in 2018 blocked a right-to-work law passed by Republican lawmakers.)
Proponents of such laws say they allow workers to freely choose whether to support union causes and make states attractive to businesses. It also saps membership and financial power from labor unions — a key part of the Democratic coalition — another reason right-to-work appeals to Republican lawmakers and conservatives.
Michigan’s law was highly contentious when Republicans pushed it through during the lame-duck session following the 2012 election, with unions rallying thousands of people to the statehouse in protest of the legislation. The state’s then-governor, Republican Rick Snyder, at the time pointed to voters’ overwhelming rejection of a state constitutional amendment that would have enshrined collective bargaining rights as validation of the GOP’s actions.
“It was a quite a heavy victory,” for opponents of the constitutional amendment, said Patrick Wright, the vice president for legal affairs at the conservative Mackinac Center for Public Policy. “It became a lot easier for people to think about it and take those votes.”
Michigan’s repeal was years in the making and is just one of several high-profile progressive issues statehouse Democrats have taken on in the months after narrowly gaining unified control of the legislature for the first time since the 1980s.
The effort was helped by several factors unique to the state, though by the same token could make it hard for union backers to replicate Michigan’s example elsewhere.
For one, Michigan’s law was far less entrenched than others — some of which date back to the 1940s or have been written into state constitutions — and the memories of the 2012 defeat remain relatively fresh in Democrats’ minds.
“I just remember being so incredibly distraught, outraged, and feeling helpless about not being able to do anything about it and the way in which it was done,” said state Rep. Regina Weiss, a former teacher who sponsored the repeal legislation. “That was the first time I was really starting to pay attention to what was happening in state politics in Michigan.”
Weiss is among the more than 40 percent of state House Democrats — 24 out of 56 — who have been members of a union, according to data from the Michigan AFL-CIO.
Repeal backers also credited the successful 2018 ballot initiative to create an independent redistricting commission as integral to making it possible for Democrats to gain control of the Legislature, as opposed to a state like neighboring Wisconsin, where district lines were drawn to favor Republicans.
“That’s the difference between having a legislative majority that has your back and wants to expand workers’ rights, as opposed to being in the minority and having a legislature that was to suppress workers’ rights,” Ron Bieber, the head of the Michigan AFL-CIO, said in an interview.
Michigan is also the home of several big-name Republican donors, such as financier Ron Weiser and the DeVos family, who have bankrolled right-to-work and other conservative causes and galvanized opponents.
“When you explain that these initiatives that are backed by Betsy DeVos, or whomever, folks here know that’s probably not a good thing for most working people because that’s not who they’re here for,” Weiss said.
A spokesperson for the former secretary of Education did not return a request for comment.
Along with the right-to-work repeal, which applies to private-sector workers, Michigan lawmakers passed legislation MI HB4004 (23R) that would apply to public-sector jobs in the event the U.S. Supreme Court revisited its 2018 Janus decision, which held that requiring non-union public employees to pay agency fees to unions was unconstitutional.
Democrats also passed a measure reinstating prevailing wage requirements for publicly funded construction projects MI HB4007 (23R) previously repealed by the GOP.
“Michigan in 2023 is not the same as Michigan in 2012,” Bieber said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Earthquake strikes in national capital second day in a row
Delhi, Mar 22: An earthquake of magnitude 2.7 on the Richter scale struck 17 km west-northwest of Delhi on Wednesday, the National Center for Seismology reported.
In a tweet, the National Center for Seismology stated, “Earthquake of Magnitude:2.7, Occurred on 22-03-2023, 16:42:35 IST, Lat: 28.66 & Long: 77.03, Depth: 5 Km, Location: 17km WNW of New Delhi, India.” Earlier, strong tremors from a 6.6 magnitude earthquake that struck Afghanistan’s remote Hindu Kush mountains, jangled nerves and triggered panic across states in the North Indian belt on Tuesday evening.
In Delhi and adjoining areas of the national capital, panicked locals came out on the streets as the tremors struck.
The NCS said an earthquake of magnitude of 6.6 on the Richter Scale hit 133km SSE of Fayzabad, Afghanistan on Tuesday at 10:17 pm.
Following the tremours, Delhi Fire Services received calls about tilted buildings and cracks appearing in buildings from Jamia Nagar, Kalkaji and Shahdara areas.
Fire services teams rushed to these areas to take stock of the situation. However, authorities later confirmed that the buildings did not title post the earthquake.
“A PCR call regarding the tilting of a building due to the earthquake was received from the Shakarpur area. Police, PCR, Fire brigade and District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) reached the spot. Apparently, no crack or tilt was observed in the building. The caller said he called as he suspected a tilt,” said Delhi Police.(ANI)
