Armed guards aboard a yacht once owned by the late Welsh actor Richard Burton have fired on approaching ships in the Gulf of Aden, prompting an intense gunfight. Yemeni authorities said the guards mistakenly opened fire on a Coast Guard vessel but the ship’s manager insisted they had clashed with pirates.
The shooting reportedly killed one Yemeni Coast Guard member and wounded another person in a hail of gunfire – the guards are said to have shot as many as 200 rounds of ammunition. The incident shows the danger faced by both shippers and security forces in the waters off the Arab world’s poorest country, even as it remains crucial for global commerce.
Details of what happened to the Kalizma remain unclear and contested, hours after the incident. The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations initially reported it as an attack with gunfire off Nishtun, in Yemen’s far east near the border with Oman.
But later, the British military operation providing support to ships across the Mideast described the attack in the Gulf of Aden as being “confirmed by authorities as government agency activity”, without elaborating.
Ambrey, a maritime intelligence company, said in a brief that a Yemeni Coast Guard contingent had approached a Cook Islands-flagged yacht that hadn’t responded to radio calls.
According to the Coast Guard, “an armed security team … onboard the yacht then opened fire on the approaching Yemenis and attempted to escape perceived pirates,” Ambrey said. The Coast Guard “returned fire and followed the yacht for approximately an hour until communications with the yacht could be established and the misunderstanding between the parties resolved”.
Ambrey said one Yemeni Coast Guard member was killed. A later statement from the Yemeni Coast Guard, posted online, acknowledged the death and said its forces along with Yemen’s navy tried to stop the Kalizma as it was operating in a “very suspicious way” close to the shore and did not answer radio calls.
“The yacht penetrated territorial waters and sailed in them without raising the flag of the yacht’s country, as well as refused to respond and stop in clear violation of international maritime law,” the Yemeni Coast Guard said.
Aashim Mongia, the owner of Mumbai’s West Coast Marine Yacht Services, which manages the Kalizma, told The Associated Press that one of the guards on board the vessel suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder. He insisted that “pirates” attacked the vessel first and came back in several waves to try to take the Kalizma, forcing the ship’s three guards to fire more than 200 rounds to protect the nine crew on board.
“If it was the Yemeni Coast Guard, why did they open fire?” Mongia asked.
Photos from the ship showed what appeared to be bullet holes from small arms fire scattered across the luxurious Kalizma.
Initially built in 1906, the Kalizma was bought by Burton for $220,000 in 1967. It was on board the ship where he gave actor and his twice-wife Elizabeth Taylor a 69.42-carat, pear-shaped diamond now known as the Taylor-Burton Diamond.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton on Kalizma off Capo Caccia on the coast of Sardinia, August 1967. Photograph: Express/Getty Images
The ship later was bought by Indian investor Shirish Saraf, according to a profile by magazine Boat International. Requests for comment to Saraf’s investment firm Samena Capital were not answered.
Nishtun is held by forces allied to Yemen’s internationally recognised government, which is backed by a Saudi-led coalition. The Gulf of Aden is a crucial route for global trade and has seen attacks attributed to Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels during the country’s yearslong civil war. Somali pirate attacks that once plagued the region have mostly stopped in recent years.
However, attacks have happened there before. In December 2020, a mysterious attack targeted a cargo ship off Nishtun. In Yemen’s war, bomb-carrying drone boats, as well as sea mines, have been used.
[ad_2]
#Shots #fired #mistakenly #Yemeni #Coast #Guard #yacht #owned #Richard #Burton
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Protesters carry a banner as they attend a mass ‘independence party’ in a demonstration against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his nationalist coalition government’s judicial overhaul. The fight over the judicial changes ‘transcends issues of left and right, and comes down to public distrust in government’, said one of the architects of the plans, Simcha Rothman.
[ad_2]
#week #world #pictures
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
“It was an incredible, emotional moment for me to spend time with her,” Andriy Shevchenko says as he describes meeting a little Ukrainian girl called Maryna last month. The most famous former footballer from Ukraine, who won the Ballon d’Or in 2004 and the Champions League with Milan before he also coached his country at Euro 2020, pauses as he reflects on a simple encounter where he kicked a football back and forth in hospital with the six-year-old.
The images of their kickaround assume a grainy resonance when it is explained that Maryna had become the first child in Ukraine to receive a prosthetic limb after her leg was blown off by a Russian missile last year. For many weeks she barely moved. Finally, when she was well enough to sit up, her doctors started the slow process of her rehabilitation by using a football. Maryna learned to balance on her prosthetic leg while using her good foot to kick the ball.
For Shevchenko, Maryna represents the courageous spirit of Ukraine but he concedes: “It’s very sad to say it like that because she is so young to have been in that condition. But she shows everyone she’s very strong coming back from a terrible injury. It took her some time, especially emotionally, to recover. But she is so brave.”
The 46-year-old, who won 111 caps for Ukraine, leans forward, his eyes shining with emotion as he describes playing football with Maryna at the Ohmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv. “I saw her start smiling. The doctor came to me and said: ‘Andriy, she’s been here for four months and we never saw her even smiling.’ Then she gets excited, playing with the ball, and she kicked it back to me with both legs. She was very enthusiastic.
Andriy Shevchenko with Maryna, the first child in Ukraine to receive a prosthetic limb after her leg was blown off by a Russian missile. Photograph: Andrii Yushchak/UNITED24
“I saw a lot of kids in the paediatric hospital and many of them were in a very difficult condition. The next day I went to another hospital where I met soldiers, who are really just boys of 18 or 19, and they have no legs, no arms.”
Shevchenko’s four sons are aged between nine and 18 and, on an otherwise ordinary Wednesday afternoon at his home in London, he nods gently when I ask whether this most recent visit to Ukraine made him think of his own boys. “Of course. But I think it’s good we’re speaking because I want the world to understand the damage. The images of destruction and the bombs coming can be seen on television but the personal feeling after you go inside the hospitals is absolutely different. You feel the pain of people. So I want to share with the world what Ukrainian people are feeling.
“These young soldiers are defending the frontline, risking their lives, and there are civilian [casualties] too. When you go to Ukraine you always know it can happen to anyone. You accept that. Everyone who moves inside the war zone knows. But it’s more dangerous to be close to the frontline and you see so many families and young children who stayed there. We need to support these people when they have to recover in hospital. But we also need some human relationships with them, to encourage people after such a difficult injury to have a desire to live, to continue life. Most of them, I’m sure, can recover back to normal life – like Maryna.”
How did Shevchenko try to comfort the young soldiers who had lost limbs in the war? “I just want to give them attention. I walk in, give him a big thank you for his service, for defending Ukraine. It is one of the hardest moments, going to these hospitals, but it becomes a good feeling to say thanks to them from everyone.”
Shevchenko’s words carry even more weight after the latest wave of bombing across Ukraine. In the early hours of Friday Russia fired more than 20 cruise missiles and two drones at Kyiv and other cities. The haunting sound of air raid sirens echoed around a darkened Kyiv for the first time since early March. There are reports of at least 25 more deaths and of children being rescued from the rubble of their destroyed homes.
We return to the early hours of 24 February 2022 when the war began. “I remember going to sleep the night before,” Shevchenko says. “I was very nervous but I still believed it would be OK because it’s impossible they start a war with no reason. Until then we believed that Russia would not attack Ukraine. But I did not feel peaceful. I left my phone close to me because I was in London and my mother was in Kyiv.”
Andriy Shevchenko playing football with children in Borodianka. Photograph: Andrii Yushchak/UNITED24
Shevchenko is briefly silent as the memories flood through him. “It was three in the morning for me,” he continues, “and 5am in Ukraine. I open my eyes because my mum phoned me. I already know what it means. You don’t know for how long we’re going to be in this war but you know something terrible has happened. When the first attack started some important military bases around the airports were hit by missiles. My mum lives pretty close to one of them and she felt that explosion and called me immediately. She was scared and disoriented. She was crying and so I knew. War had started.”
His mother and sister left Ukraine six weeks later. “My mum didn’t feel well,” he explains, “and so my sister took her and their two dogs across Ukraine, close to the border. When they could they crossed the border and went to Italy. So they are safe but they have been three times back in Ukraine. They go back and forth. We all do. I try to go to Ukraine every month.”
The family’s close links with Italy are rooted in his successful years with Milan. Shevchenko scored 173 goals in 296 gamesbetween 1999 and 2006, reaching two Champions League finals. In 2003 he scored Milan’s winning penalty in a dramatic shootout in the final against Juventus while, two years later, his spot-kick at the same stage was saved by Jerzy Dudek in the Liverpool goal. That missed penalty meant Liverpool won the shootout, having been 3-0 down at half-time of normal time and with their 3-3 draw secured only by Dudek’s incredible double save from Shevchenko in extra time.
This season has sparked such memories for Shevchenko again and it’s striking that we only stop talking about the war in Ukraine to discuss Milan’s unexpected progress to the semi-finals. Next month they play Internazionale in a Champions League derby which reminds Shevchenko of the 2003 semi-final. He scored the vital away goal against Inter which helped Milan reach the final.
Andriy Shevchenko scoring for Milan against Internazionale in their 2003 Champions League semi-final. Photograph: Phil Cole/Getty Images
“They are fantastic memories,” Shevchenko says with a smile, “and Milan have a big chance to repeat the story against Inter again.”
He is enough of a Milan supporter to believe that they could shock everyone by winning the Champions League – even though Manchester City or Real Madrid would await in the final. “I watched how Milan played those two quarter-final games against Napoli like a mature team,” he says. “I say mature because, when they had to suffer, Milan would close the gap, defend, work as a team, covering a lot of distance and fight. And then they could strike when the chances came. These games are so close but there is a maturity to the team. I think Milan could do it because they have good players and a very strong team spirit.”
Shevchenko is an astute and intelligent coach, who did excellent work in guiding Ukraine to the quarter-finals of the Covid-delayed Euro 2020, where they lost to England in Rome in the summer of 2021. When he took over as national coach they had just emerged from a miserable tournament at Euro 2016 after losing all three group games and failing to score. Shevchenko drew on everything he had learned from his managerial mentor Valeriy Lobanovskyi, who had helped Dynamo Kyiv become a force in Europe in the 70s and 80s.
skip past newsletter promotion
after newsletter promotion
When Shevchenko played under Lobanovskyi at Dynamo he became intensely serious about football. “He gave me the understanding that there are no trifles in football,” Shevchenko said. “No detail of the work can be ignored. I listened to him with my mouth open, catching every word.”
Shevchenko’s knowledge deepened during his years in Italy when he was coached by Alberto Zaccheroni and then Carlo Ancelotti, who became his second mentor. The lessons he learned from Italian football shaped his work in revitalising Ukraine. It would have been fascinating to discover how Shevchenko might have done in club management but his brief stint at Genoa lasted just over two months, and nine league games, before he was sacked after a defeat by Milan in January 2022.
Five weeks later Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine and the first bombs rained down on Kyiv. Shevchenko’s determination to help raise awareness of the unjust conflict means that any return to coaching has been delayed. His immersion in the war effort is deep and so there is no time to analyse the current fiasco at Chelsea, where Shevchenko battled with injury and form during an unsuccessful spell from 2006 to 2009. We do not get a chance to discuss how Roman Abramovich, who was once close to Putin, had pursued Shevchenko relentlessly before he signed him from Milan.
We also don’t have time to reflect on his happier times at Dynamo, where he developed into the lethal striker who lit up European football. I would love to ask Shevchenko about the night in 1997 when, aged just 21, he scored a Champions League hat-trick in the first half for Dynamo against Barcelona at the Camp Nou. The war, instead, is too consuming for such memories.
“As soon as the war started,” Shevchenko says, “my mum and my sister were packed, with their small luggage, ready to go any time. My aunt also spent 10 days under the shelter, hiding from missiles in the first months of the war. I know families who didn’t even have time to pack or take their passports. They had to [flee] because danger was coming. We did this as a family when I was very young [Shevchenko was nine when his family had to leave their village near Chornobyl and move to Kyiv in 1986] but that was a nuclear disaster. This is a war and if you had asked me a few years ago if this could happen I would say: ‘No.’”
Has he lost friends in the war? “Yes,” Shevchenko says. “A few close friends. But I know people who have lost much more.”
Andriy Shevchenko with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Photograph: Alamy
Amid grief and pain he and Oleksandr Zinchenko, Ukraine’s captain who has been a revelation for Arsenal this season, have set up their Football for Ukraine initiative which aims to raise funds for the war effort. “We already did a lot of different projects together,” he says of Zinchenko and himself. “Now we’re preparing something big with this project to raise support for Ukrainian people. We already did a project in [the war-torn city of] Irpin with UNITED24.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy set up UNITED24 to give people around the world an easy and direct way to support Ukraine’s military efforts, enhance medical aid and help finance the rebuilding of the country. “We raised funds to rebuild the football stadium in Irpin and I think the impact of sport is very important,” Shevchenko says as an ambassador for UNITED24. “It can bring something different to people, and help them escape the war for a little bit. Oleksandr has been incredible. I’m very proud of him because he’s young and he has a very young family, with a baby, but he has given so much support to Ukraine. He’s not only tried to find the funds but he speaks loud about Ukraine. He has stayed so strong.”
As his former national‑team manager, has Shevchenko helped Zinchenko adjust to the trauma of having to address the war again and again? “When we talk I try to tell him; ‘Don’t hold the emotion. Let it out. There’s nothing to hold. We have to show the truth. We are here to show the world exactly what Ukrainian people are feeling.’ It has been difficult for everyone but, every time we speak, I always remind him: ‘We have to be a lot stronger. We have to help our people in Ukraine because they need us. We have to bring attention to the war.’”
Does the endless grind, with Russian aggression continuing no matter how heroically the Ukrainian army pushes them back, leave Shevchenko feeling depressed? “I am much stronger now. I know we have to just carry on. At the beginning of the war, and for the first four months there was a lot of hard stuff for me. But I can’t complain because I know on the frontline the soldiers have to face so much and families in Ukraine have to evacuate dangerous areas which have been hit by missiles. We went through an incredible year, the winter was so difficult, and with the first big blackout in Ukraine I was there, in Kyiv.
“But we defend our country and this gives us such power. We know the entire democratic world is behind us. But this is a good moment for me to remind everyone that the war keeps going.
“Please help share the Maryna story. These are our people, our children and our soldiers, who are losing their lives or being badly injured. It’s important the entire world keeps helping us. We still have a strong spirit – and that spirit will help us to defend Ukraine and win in the end.”
[ad_2]
#Andriy #Shevchenko #share #world #Ukrainian #people #feeling
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
After eight years, 85 Tests, 76 wins and 3,411 points scored, England’s head coach Simon Middleton takes charge of his final match on Saturday. It should be quite a finale, with a world-record crowd for a women’s game in excess of 53,000 expected at Twickenham as the Red Roses go head-to-head with France in a winner-takes-all Six Nations decider.
The record currently stands at 42,579, set at the World Cup final at Eden Park in November. The attendance is also sure to smash the current Women’s Six Nations record, set last weekend with 18,604 watching France v Wales at the Stade des Alpes in Grenoble.
To more than double the record shows the progress not only the tournament is making, but the entire sport. The Twickenham crowd figure will hopefully act as a springboard for more avenues of progress and it will be a boost to the hopes of the Rugby Football Union who want to sell out Twickenham for the World Cup final in 2025.
Middleton – for whom a 53,000 attendance must have seemed unimaginable when he took the job in 2015 – has said the number of tickets sold has exceeded expectation and England’s vice-captain Zoe Aldcroft told the Guardian: “It shows how much the game has come on, to have a standalone match at Twickenham. For them to think we would sell that amount of tickets, even though we have gone over the amount they thought they would sell, it’s just amazing.
“I think my heart is going to be absolutely pumping. It is the adrenaline it will bring and obviously most of the crowd will be behind England so I think that is something we really have to take confidence in and put on a good performance because that is what they are coming to see. We want to make it a good event so it can happen again and again in the future.”
The crowd will be treated to a tight match if recent history is anything to go by. England came out 13-7 winners the last time the teams met in October at the World Cup and the Red Roses defeated France 24-12 in last year’s Six Nations. England have generally had the upper hand of late, however – the last time France beat their old rivals was in the 2018 Women’s Six Nations, coming out 18-17 winners, and the loss was the last time England were defeated in the competition. The Red Roses have been on a 23-match Six Nations winning run since. England have also been handed a boost ahead of the match with their captain Marlie Packer, the prop Hannah Botterman and No 8 Poppy Cleall ruled fit.
And while England will be favourites to win their fifth successive Women’s Six Nations, France could upset the Twickenham party. England’s biggest weakness, arguably, is their handling. They have made 69 handling errors in the 2023 tournament so far and they were exploited against Wales. The Red Roses’ mistakes in the first half saw Wales score points first and they held England from scoring until the 26th minute.
France could exploit the same weakness this weekend and if effective, England may not be able to rely on a rolling maul or an Abby Dow wonder try with France’s defence impressive in the tournament thus far. Les Bleues have conceded 29 points with only England conceding fewer. France will also have extra motivation to get the trophy win with one of their stalwarts retiring – the fly-half Jessy Trémoulière starts at 10 for her last ever match. The 30-year-old has won two Six Nations titles, finished third in three World Cups and was named Women’s 15s player of the decade by World Rugby in 2020.
England have been given a boost with the news that Poppy Cleall is fit to play against France. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian
England’s attack coach, Scott Bemand, is also leaving his role after the tournament alongside Middleton, for whom victory would mean a sixth Women’s Six Nations title. Middleton was the assistant coach when England won the 2014 World Cup and took over from Gary Street as head coach the following year. While Middleton did not manage to get his hands on the World Cup as head coach, losing in the 2017 and 2022 finals to New Zealand, he has overseen huge changes to the women’s game during his tenure.
skip past newsletter promotion
after newsletter promotion
In 2019, the Rugby Football Union introduced professional contracts for the first time which Middleton called a “massive opportunity” when they were awarded. Since professionalism was introduced to the team they have won every Six Nations, Middleton became the first women’s coach to be named World Rugby Coach of the Year and England set a new world record after going 30 games unbeaten.
Aldcroft spoke on the impact Middleton has had, not only on England but on the game more widely. “For us, for England, Midds has been absolutely huge,” the Gloucester-Hartpury player said. “The standards that he sets for the team and the drive that he gives us is unbelievable. It can only be from him how much we have achieved over the last few years. So he has been amazing for England rugby and women’s rugby in general.”
Middleton told BBC Sport this week: “There was always going to be an evolution process but hopefully I’ve been able to accelerate it. I’ve been clear on what I want for the squad and that is to try and get the very best support around them. Where the game is now is massively important to me and I’m very proud of the fact that we’re so in the public domain now, everyone wants to cover us and come and see us.”
[ad_2]
#Red #Roses #eye #records #Nations #title #Middletons #grand #finale
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
“We’re going to be the first state in the nation to advance zero-emissions new homes and buildings,” Hochul said Thursday, announcing a conceptual deal on the budget that was due March 31.
The measure will help the state achieve its ambitious mandate to slash emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030 and 85 percent by 2050 and was recommended in a plan approved in December by state agency heads and outside experts. Exemptions will be included for commercial kitchens, emergency generators and hospitals.
But some key details have not yet been finalized. Hochul also indicated she expects the deal to include rebates to consumers as part of a cap-and-trade initiative for emissions, but a detailed agreement hasn’t been reached on that issue.
There is no measure that eventually bans the replacement of gas furnaces in existing homes included in the budget, which Hochul had proposed and is recommended in the state’s climate plan. Lawmakers rejected that early on in negotiations. And none of the budget proposals included any measure targeting gas stoves in existing buildings.
Details of the agreement will be laid out in state budget bills that have not yet been printed. A potentially major caveat on grid reliability pushed by Assembly Democrats and a major gas utility also hasn’t been finalized, leading environmental advocates to moderate their enthusiasm until they see the final wording.
The Assembly initially proposed a requirement for the state’s Public Service Commission to review the ability of the electric system to support new buildings, although it was not clear how that would function because the requirements for reliable service already enshrined in state law.
“As the governor and legislative leadership continue to hammer out the details, they need to ensure that this is as strong as possible and there aren’t any loopholes,” said Liz Moran, New York policy advocate for Earthjustice. “The technology is ready, and we absolutely have to be doing this to meet our climate law mandates.”
Advocates had pushed for an earlier implementation of the restrictions and pushed back on a later start for commercial buildings. Hochul had initially proposed a split at four stories for the timeline, but environmental groups and Senate Democrats backed seven stories to align with New York City’s zero-emission building law that passed in 2021.
The later date — starting Dec. 31, 2028 — is also expected to apply for commercial buildings and those over 100,000 square feet, Hochul spokesperson Katy Zielinski said.
A measure to end the “100 foot rule” subsidies for new gas hookups, as proposed by Senate Democrats, is not in the budget, Zielinski said. That means utilities will still pass on some costs of hooking up new customers, who they are legally required to serve, to other gas ratepayers.
The state budget will include a provision to allow for rebates to New York residents under a cap-and-trade program that is expected to be rolled out in 2025 and will raise gas prices at the pump and home heating fuel costs. Some additional details about how the funds could be spent may also be included but details are not finalized, according to the governor’s office.
“What we’re doing is setting up a mechanism to be able to allow for rebates that we generate with a cap and invest program,” Hochul said. “We think that is the important first step, because we couldn’t do it under existing law.”
Some environmental advocates had pressed for the Legislature to play more of a role in the parameters of that program, which is expected to be rolled out through regulations by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. It will help the state achieve the emissions reductions required under the 2019 climate law, but Hochul has raised concerns about the costs of the program and sought to rewrite the law to reduce the emissions captured by the measure.
“We’re focusing on aggressive climate protections but we have to make sure that they’re affordable for New Yorkers or it won’t work,” she said.
Hochul also said that a measure to allow the New York Power Authority to build new renewables was included in the deal. The measure will include labor standards, allow but not require NYPA to work with the private sector on renewable projects and includes the “renewable energy access and community help” program for NYPA to provide bill credits to low-income residents to reduce their utility costs, according to the governor’s office.
Assemblymember Ken Zebrowski (D-Rockland County) said the details of the NYPA measure are among the open issues: “Hopefully there is a full agreement soon and everything can go to print, but those details aren’t all worked out yet.”
Hochul also announced the Environmental Protection Fund would be kept at $400 million; $500 million in additional funding would go to water infrastructure.
Lawmakers have also agreed to Hochul’s proposal of $200 million for utility bill relief and $200 million for a NYSERDA program to weatherize and electrify the homes of some low-income New Yorkers.
[ad_2]
#York #set #ban #gas #furnaces #stoves #buildings
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Striking federal workers in Canada are calling for the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to get involved in stalled negotiations, as the largest job action in decades enters its 10th day and key government services grind to a halt.
More than 100,000 employees with Canada’s largest public sector union have been on strike since last week in a battle over wages and the ability to work remotely.
The strike has disrupted the federal government’s ability to process income tax returns and to issue quarterly payments to low-income Canadians. With taxes due in the coming days, the country’s revenue agency has said it will not delay filing deadlines. Passport and visa processing have also slowed significantly.
The union and the federal government agree workers should get a raise – but the two sides are divided over how much is fair. The union initially called for 13.5% over three years, as well as contract language that formalizes a universal work-from-home policy. The treasury board has offered a 9% raise over a similar time period, which they say equates to an additional C$6,500 (US$4,800) annually for workers.
“This government says it cares about restoring services for Canadians, but they seem content to shrug it off and prolong this strike and its impact on Canadians everywhere,” the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the union, said in a recent internal email sent to workers.
Despite the protracted nature of the strike, 55% of Canadians support federal employees’ right to work from home, according to polling from the Angus Reid Institute, a non-profit public opinion firm.
In recent days, the union escalated its picket lines by targeting Toronto’s Pearson airport, the country’s busiest travel hub, as well as attempting to block shipping ports in Vancouver, Montreal and St John’s. Thousands of workers have also picketed on Parliament Hill.
Despite mounting pressure to end the strike, the treasury board, which oversees public administration, said in a statement it would “not sign agreements that the country cannot afford, nor ones that severely impact our ability to deliver services to Canadians”.
With talks stalled, union leaders say they have lost confidence in the treasury secretary, Mona Fortier, to break the impasse. Instead, they want Trudeau to take a more hands-on approach.
“He can either get involved personally and help settle this dispute or he can turn his back on the workers who are striking,” the union president, Chris Aylward, said while visiting striking workers on Parliament Hill. “We’ll be out here for as long as it takes.”
Trudeau has said he supports the right to collective bargaining.
“Yes, it’s frustrating to know that Canadians may, as the days come, have more difficulty accessing services, but that’s a motivator for everyone to try and resolve this,” said Trudeau.
As the strike drags on, the standoff has become increasingly used as prop, with leaders looking to score political points.
Earlier in the week, the Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, sang Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York, criticizing Trudeau’s trip to New York city for meetings. Poilievre was reminded by parliament’s speaker that singing is not permitted in the House of Commons.
The New Democratic party leader, Jagmeet Singh, who has a deal to support the governing Liberals until 2025, warned his party would not support any legislation that forced workers to abandon their strike.
[ad_2]
#Federal #workers #Trudeau #step #pay #workfromhome #dispute
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
A UN body has declared that the detention of a long-term Guantánamo inmate, Abu Zubaydah, has no lawful basis and called for his immediate release, warning that the systemic deprivation of liberty at the camp may “constitute crimes against humanity”.
The UN working group on arbitrary detention (UNWGAD), also declared the UK, among other countries, was “jointly responsible for the torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of Mr Zubaydah” over his more than 20 years in detention.
The UNWGAD finding released on Friday specifically addresses the case of Zubaydah, a 52-year-old Palestinian captured in Pakistan in March 2002, and held and tortured in a series of CIA black sites, before being transferred to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in 2006. The US initially claimed he was “number three” in al-Qaida but later conceded he was not a member at all.
The finding went further to address detention at Guantánamo in general, and “expresses grave concern about the pattern that all these cases follow and recalls that, under certain circumstances, widespread or systematic imprisonment or other severe deprivation of liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law may constitute crimes against humanity”.
The UN working group is a quasi-judicial body, issuing legal judgments on behalf of the international community, but they are not binding, nor does it have the power to enforce its findings. It is made up of five legal experts from around the world: the current panel consists of lawyers, law professors and former judges drawn from Malaysia, New Zealand, Ukraine, Ecuador and Zambia.
Abu Zubaydah. Photograph: AP
Friday marks the first time an international body has referred to the 21-year-old prison camp as a potential crime against humanity, the first time such a body has ruled against the US for Abu Zubaydah’s detention, and the first international case finding against the UK, Morocco, Thailand and Afghanistan, all of whom are deemed complicit in arbitrary detention, rendition and torture.
The decision also found Pakistan, Poland and Lithuania to be part responsible: Pakistan for participation in his arrest and rendition, and Poland and Lithuania for hosting black sites. The European Court of Human Rights has previously ruled against Poland and Lithuania for their participation in the web of secret detention facilities and rendition flights.
Helen Duffy, Zubaydah’s international legal representative, who runs a Hague-based legal group, Human Rights in Practice, said: “Today’s decision is a powerful reminder of the complete unlawfulness of Guantánamo, and our client’s situation in particular.”
“The UK has been found legally responsible for ‘complicity’ in our client’s torture and ongoing unlawful detention, and reparations should follow,” Duffy said. “This can include offers of relocation, recognition and apology, rehabilitation and compensation.”
She added: “We need to reckon with the fact that the ‘war on terror’, as waged for 20 years, has failed. But we cannot pretend to learn lessons from it while perpetuating its most notorious wrongs.”
There are 30 inmates left at the Guantánamo camp, of which only one has been convicted of a crime; 10 are involved in military tribunal proceedings, although in most cases, the trials have not even started; 16 have been recommended for a transfer to another country, pending security guarantees; and the Biden administration has been in quiet negotiations with foreign governments to persuade them to accept transferred inmates.
Zubaydah is one of three “forever prisoners” who have not been charged and not been recommended for transfer.
[ad_2]
#Crimes #humanity #body #calls #release #Guantánamo #inmate
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
The measure is the culmination of a long-running messaging campaign Republicans have built across the country directed at passing a “Women’s Bill of Rights.” And the GOP’s victory in Kansas may signal the success of their tactics as similar proposals get introduced or advance in Oklahoma, South Carolina, North Dakota and Tennessee.
Kansas House Republicans touted their override as a win for protecting women’s rights.
The chamber’s top lawmakers said in a statement that they “stand with women and girls in Kansas and their right to privacy, safety and dignity in single-sex spaces. Trading one group’s rights for another’s is never okay.”
Montana, where both chambers of the statehouse have cleared a bill that would also codify a definition of sex into law, is expected to join Kansas in the next few days.
“We saw they began with sports bans, but we know that the goal of the people targeting the trans community was never about sports — it was about eradicating trans people from public life,” Montana Rep. Zooey Zephyr, the first transgender woman elected to the state legislature, said in an interview.
Zephyr gained national attention this month for telling her GOP colleagues they would have blood on their hands for supporting bills that prohibit youth gender-affirming care. She was censured by the Montana state Legislature Wednesday after refusing to apologize for her remarks and hundreds of people protested her silencing at the state Capitol. The restrictions prevent her from speaking on the floor for the rest of the legislative session, though she will be able to vote remotely.
“Trans people exist,” Zephyr, a Democrat, told POLITICO. “Non-binary people exist, intersex people exist and you cannot legislate us out of existence.”
After being shut out of power in Washington, conservative women’s groups quickly turned their attention to state capitals, most of which are run by GOP majorities or supermajorities, having tested gender issues in a number of 2022 campaigns. These statehouse fights over codifying a binary definition of sex will also likely rattle school districts caught between conflicting state and federal laws that dictate which bathrooms and sports teams transgender students can access.
More than 20 states have laws restricting transgender students from playing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity, at least seven states block them from using facilities and more than 15 states bar transgender minors from accessing gender-affirming care.
The Kansas measure defines a female as someone “whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova.” It also specifies other terms, including “girl,” “woman,” and “mother.” A similar proposal backed by several conservative women’s groups was first introduced in May 2022 on the federal level and reintroduced this Congress in February.
“The Kansas bill would certainly be among the most restrictive ones that we’ve seen in the country — one of the most expansive, one of the most extreme and really just one of the most mean spirited and hurtful,” ACLU of Kansas Executive Director Micah Kubic said before the House vote. “School districts are probably one of the very first places where this bill and all of the other ones like it will show up.”
Republicans nationwide have been increasingly targeting transgender issues to rally their base, message on Capitol Hill and attract moderate women voters ahead of the 2024 elections.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona was pressed by Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) to answer “what is a woman” during an April hearing about the Education Department’s fiscal 2024 budget. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) led the same line of questioning against Ketanji Brown Jackson during her nomination for the Supreme Court last year.
And in Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address, she described the president as “the first man to surrender his presidency to a woke mob that can’t even tell you what a woman is.”
House Republicans also used their slim majority to pass a bill to restrict transgender students from playing on women’s sports teams — a rebuke to the Biden administration’s Title IX athletics proposal unveiled in April.
The new rule would make categorical transgender sports bans illegal and allow transgender girls to play on girls sports teams, but with some limitations. The rule acknowledges competition levels, fairness and a school’s interest in preventing injuries especially in contact sports.
“Even if you look at Biden’s Title IX proposed rule on sports, there is a recognition that there are differences between men and women,” said May Mailman, senior legal fellow at the Independent Women’s Law Center, which has pushed for federal bills and the one in Kansas. “You can’t say women are deserving of protection, but we don’t know what women are.”
Women’s groups and conservative political leaders say the “bill of rights” laws are needed to protect sex-separated spaces like prisons and domestic violence shelters.
Lauren Bone, who served as legal director for the Women’s Liberation Front, which is backing the measures, said they are not meant to ostracize or harm people. She said there is a pressing need for definitions of sex and gender identity that people struggle to define, especially as lawmakers present legislation with the terms.
“This is codifying everybody’s definition that they already have in their head,” Bone said.
A similar bill is advancing in Montana, where the state legislature is finishing some procedural hurdles for the measure before sending it to Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, who is expected to sign it over the objections of one of his sons who identifies as nonbinary.
Unlike Kansas’ proposal, the Montana bill is not rooted in the argument of protecting sex-separated spaces. Instead, LGBTQ advocates say the bill looks to advance and make permanent restrictions on transgender, nonbinary and intersex people that started with 2021 legislation from GOP state Sen. Carl Glimm that made it onerous for them to change their sex designation on their birth certificate. Glimm has said the bill is necessary because people conflate sex and gender.
Medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, support gender-affirming care for adolescents, which rarely, if ever, includes surgery for children. But Gianforte has pressed for legislation that would ban the use of public funds for gender-affirming care for minors, preferring they make the decision as adults.
If the state clears a binary definition of sex, the Montana ACLU said school districts and other agencies caught between conflicting state and federal laws could risk their federal funding.
“This bill would likely jeopardize $7.5 billion of federal funds — which is about half of Montana’s budget — because these definitions do not comport with federal regulations and the existing Civil Rights Act,” said Keegan Medrano, ACLU Montana’s director of policy and advocacy. “This impacts universities, schools and other elements where federal funds are currently being accessed by Montana.”
Civil rights organizations say if the legislation continues to spread across the country, transgender, nonbinary and intersex people’s existence is at risk, according to Liz King, senior education program director at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which represents more than 200 groups.
“There has been an effort to capitalize on fear mongering around otherness for a very long time,” King said. “And this is only the latest manifestation.”
[ad_2]
#Whats #woman #Check #Kansas #law
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Trudeau’s words echoed U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan who used a major policy address Thursday to point the direction the White House plans to take in the global economy.
“We’re at a moment now where we need to build capacity to produce the goods and invent the technologies of the future,” Sullivan said at the Brookings Institution. “And we’re going to do that — us plus anyone else who wants to get in on the deal.”
Trudeau used his speech to relay his big-picture vision of what Canada’s role in a rapidly changing world, repeatedly slagging Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, though not by name.
No election has been called in Canada, but a quirk of Trudeau’s minority government means one could happen at any time before the next fixed election more than two years away.
“We’ve been investing in the middle class, not ginning up anger and telling them everything is broken and you need to burn it down,” he said, taking a swipe at his rival’s sloganeering, which has helped Conservatives smash fundraising records in a non-election year.
Trudeau also mirrored themes raised by President Joe Biden during his address to the House of Commons last month, evoking the truism that the destinies of Canada and the U.S. are intertwined. Just as Biden did in Ottawa, Trudeau took time in New York to address anxieties about a liberal democratic world order under duress following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The prime minister’s three-term government is under fire; critics suggest it’s worn out and unable to deal with new economic and geopolitical crises. Russia’s war and tensions with China have increased the political value of defense and industrial policies — two areas that were not Liberal priorities when they swept into power in 2015.
A leaked Pentagon assessment recently obtained by The Washington Post claims Trudeau privately told NATO officials that Canada will never meet the alliance’s defense-spending target. On Friday, Trudeau dumped the blame on Conservatives, ignoring the fact his government has been in power for nearly eight years.
“We need to continue to invest more in defense, among many other things,” the prime minister said. “The previous Conservative government, for all its saber-rattling in our country, managed to drop defense spending to below one percent of our GDP.”
As a sign of progress, he referenced Canada’s $14.2-billion deal to buy 88 F-35 stealth fighter jets from the United States.
Trudeau, both during his speech and in lengthy responses to subsequent questions, worked to establish himself as a big-picture thinker and contender in the coming election — whenever it is.
America is also entering an election season — Biden confirmed his re-election campaign earlier this week.
Asked if he’s worried about democracy and America’s future, Trudeau replied: “Obviously.”
He again noted the economies of Canada and the U.S. are interconnected.
“You guys are the greatest democracy in the world. And right now, it’s not just that it’s being taken for granted by so many of your citizens. It’s actually being devalued to a certain extent. It’s not people’s fault,” he said.
“The same forces are happening in Canada and elsewhere.”
[ad_2]
#Trudeau #stumps #democracy #York #future #home
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
At the heart of the battle: Section 702 is a powerful spying program that allows the intelligence community to snoop on the emails and other digital communications of foreigners located abroad. But the FBI does not need a warrant to search communications that have already been collected under the statute — and its growing use, and misuse, of those powers to snoop on Americans in recent years have made lawmakers reticent about reupping the program as is.
Showing restraint: The substantial decline documented within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s 2023 Annual Statistical Transparency Report buttresses the administration’s claims that it has managed to rein in FBI searches on Americans, a senior FBI official told reporters ahead of the report’s release.
The report “aptly illustrates how built-in oversight that Congress put in the statute works to … repair trust and transparency,” said the official, who provided the briefing to reporters on condition of anonymity.
The data: The FBI sifted through — or “queried” in intelligence community parlance — the 702 database for details on Americans roughly 120,000 times last year after conducting nearly 3 million such searches in 2021 and 850,000 thousand searches in 2020, the report says.
The bureau conducted those 120,000 searches due to alleged connections to foreign spies and security threats.
The bureau also has the ability to scour through the database for details on purely domestic crimes — another hot-button issue that has surfaced amid the reauthorization debate. But the FBI made only 16 such searches last year and 13 the year prior, according to the report.
Zooming out: The new report is the first to disclose the impact of a series of fixes the intelligence community implemented in 2021 after a secret intelligence court overseeing the program determined in rulings from 2021 and 2020 that the bureau committed “apparent widespread violations of the querying standard.”
The reforms amounted to a series of internal measures to discourage bureau personnel from improperly probing the database, like requiring agents to affirmatively opt-in to 702 searches and setting an upper limit on the number of terms that could be used at a time.
Falling on deaf ears: But the new data doesn’t appear to be getting traction with lawmakers who believe the spying program should not be reauthorized absent new safeguards for the federal law enforcement agency.
“While there was a sharp decline in U.S. person queries from December 2021 to November 2022, it is incumbent upon Congress, not the Executive Branch, to codify reforms to FISA Section 702,” Reps. Mike Turner (R-Oh.) and Darin LaHood (R-Ill.) said in a statement upon the report’s release.
“Today’s report highlights the urgent need for reforms to government surveillance programs in order to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans,” added Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a longtime privacy advocate, in a statement.
[ad_2]
#Government #report #shows #steep #decline #FBIs #backdoor #searches #Americans
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
