World Geography And Politics Daily News | 06 Jul 2023
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North Korea appears to lift its COVID-19 mask mandate after years of restrictions
North Korea appears to have rolled back its COVID-19 mask mandate years after the pandemic began, South Korea's Unification Ministry said.
South Korean analysts are speculating that the hermit nation has ended its blanket mask requirements as of the beginning of July.
"Photos carried by the Rodong Sinmun show that the wearing of face masks has notably declined since July 3. They are only worn in extremely rare cases," a spokesperson for South Korea's Unification Ministry told the press.
Pictures from an anti-American rally on June 25 show thousands of citizens masked during political demonstrations.
Unification Ministry officials suspect the decision was made for practical, economic reasons.
UN's WFP calls for funds to ease hunger crisis in West, Central Africa
The United Nations' World Food Programme on Wednesday said it needed extra funding to help millions of people in West and Central Africa get through the coming months known as the lean season. The WFP said the current cash crunch meant that it would only be able to help just over half of the 11.6 million targeted under an emergency food operation in countries including Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Chad, where an influx of refugees from Sudan has put extra pressure on limited resources. Conflicts an
DAKAR (Reuters) - The United Nations' World Food Programme on Wednesday said it needed extra funding to help millions of people in West and Central Africa get through the coming months known as the lean season.
The WFP said the current cash crunch meant that it would only be able to help just over half of the 11.6 million targeted under an emergency food operation in countries including Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Chad, where an influx of refugees from Sudan has put extra pressure on limited resources.
Conflicts and soaring prices have helped drive food insecurity to a 10-year high in West and Central Africa, according to a March analysis by the Cadre Harmonise, a regional food security framework.
Malnutrition rates have also surged, with 16.5 million children under 5 expected to be acutely malnourished this year, WFP said.
It seeks $794 million to respond adequately to needs in the five Sahel region countries of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger from July to December.
(Reporting by Bate Felix; Writing by Alessandra Prentice and Mark Porter)
Thousands of Israelis cripple Tel Aviv highway to support police chief ousted by Netanyahu ally
Thousands of protesters on Wednesday blocked Tel Aviv's main highway and major roads and intersections across Israel in a spontaneous outburst of anger following the forced resignation of the city's popular police chief. Ami Eshed announced late Wednesday that he was leaving the Israeli police force under what he said was political pressure. Eshed has regularly clashed with the country's hard-line national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has demanded that police take a tougher stance against months of anti-government protests.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Thousands of protesters on Wednesday blocked Tel Aviv's main highway and major roads and intersections across Israel in a spontaneous outburst of anger following the forced resignation of the city's popular police chief.
Ami Eshed announced late Wednesday that he was leaving the Israeli police force under what he said was political pressure. Eshed has regularly clashed with the country's hard-line national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has demanded that police take a tougher stance against months of anti-government protests.
“I am paying an intolerably heavy personal price for my choice to avert a civil war,” Eshed said.
Thousands of people blocked the Ayalon Highway, halting traffic on the normally bustling thruway. The protesters, many holding blue and white Israeli flags, blew horns, danced in the street and lit multiple bonfires. Police, some mounted on horseback, attempted to push back the crowds, at times using a water cannon.
During a live news broadcast, a motorist drove his car through a crowd of protesters, striking one man and send him crumpling to the ground. The driver was reportedly arrested.
Netanyahu and his allies came to power after November’s election, Israel’s fifth in under four years, all of which were largely referendums on the longtime leader’s fitness to serve while facing corruption charges.
Critics say the plan would upend Israel’s delicate system of checks and balances and push the country toward dictatorship by concentrating power in the hands of Netanyahu and his allies.
But talks with the political opposition fizzled last month, and Netanyahu's allies have begun moving ahead with the plan again.
Ben-Gvir responded to the resignation, saying politics had “infiltrated the most senior ranks” of the police force and that Eshed had made a “complete surrender” to leftist politicians.
Israel's prime minister says missing citizen in Iraq is being held by Iran-backed militia
A dual Israeli-Russian academic who has been missing in Iraq for months is being held by an Iran-backed militia in Iraq, the office of Israel’s prime minister said Wednesday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Elizabeth Tsurkov, who disappeared in late March, is still alive “and we hold Iraq responsible for her safety and well-being.” Netanyahu said Tsurkov is being held by the Shiite group Kataeb Hezbollah or Hezbollah Brigades, a powerful Iran-backed group that the U.S. government
JERUSALEM (AP) — A dual Israeli-Russian academic who has been missing in Iraq for months is being held by an Iran-backed militia in Iraq, the office of Israel’s prime minister said Wednesday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Elizabeth Tsurkov, who disappeared in late March, is still alive “and we hold Iraq responsible for her safety and well-being.”
Tsurkov, whose work focuses on the Middle East, and specifically war-torn Syria, is an expert on regional affairs and has been widely quoted over the years by international media. Tsurkov last tweeted on March 21.
She is a fellow at the Washington-based think tank New Lines Institute. Her colleague Hassan Hassan, editor in chief of New Lines Magazine, said co-workers were notified of her kidnapping in Iraq on March 29. Hassan told The Associated Press that some of her colleagues had been in touch with her just days before she went missing.
“We could not believe the news, knowing what Iraq is like for any scholar or researcher in recent years,” he said. “But there is hope that she will be released through negotiations.”
Hassan said they they have reached out to American and foreign officials, including at Princeton University where Tsurkov is pursuing her doctorate, for assistance. He added that they “called on the United States government to be involved in securing her release, despite her not being a U.S. national.”
Netanyahu said Tsurkov is an academic who visited Iraq on her Russian passport, “at her own initiative pursuant to work on her doctorate and academic research on behalf of Princeton University."
Tsurkov could not have used her Israeli passport to enter Iraq as the two countries do not have diplomatic relations.
A senior official from Kataeb Hezbollah declined to comment on the matter.
There has been no official comment from Iraq since Tsurkov went missing. Days after her disappearance, a local website reported that an Iranian citizen who was involved in her kidnapping was detained by Iraqi authorities. It said the woman was kidnapped from Baghdad’s central neighborhood of Karradah and that Iran’s embassy in the Iraqi capital was pressing for the man’s release and to have him deported to Iran.
Some Iraqi activists posted a copy of a passport of an Iranian man at the time, claiming that he was involved in the kidnapping.
Netanyahu’s office said Tsurkov’s case is being handled by the “relevant parties in the State of Israel out of concern for Elizabeth Tsurkov’s security and well-being.”
Israel considers Iran to be its greatest enemy, citing the country’s hostile rhetoric, support for militant groups such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and its suspected nuclear program. Iran denies Western allegations that it is pursuing a nuclear bomb.
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Mroue and Chehayeb reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report from Boston.
UN Approves Japan's Plan to Dump Radioactive Water Into Ocean
Water Ways The United Nations has given Japan the green light to dump into the Pacific Ocean its troves of treated radioactive water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011. As Reuters reports, the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency has concluded its two-year study into the Fukushima cooling water — which is enough to fill […]
Japan, however, claims it has done its homework and has been trying to assuage any concerns.
In a press conference in China last month, Japanese officials said that the water has been filtered over the years to remove most radioactive elements except for the hydrogen isotope tritium, which, as the report notes, is difficult to separate from water.
In spite of those assurances, however, detractors are nevertheless concerned about the controversial decision.
Chief among those critics is Beijing, which accused Japan of "completely confusing concepts and misleading public opinion" and the UN of hastily releasing its report.
"If the Japanese side is bent on going its own way," the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement to the press, as quoted by Reuters, "it must bear all the consequences."
Regardless of the UN's go-ahead, Japan will have the final say in the decision — the concluding outcome of a disaster that occurred well over a decade ago.
UN records the highest number of 'grave violations' against children in conflicts
Children experienced the highest number of “grave violations” in conflicts verified by the United Nations in 2022, with the conflicts between Israeli and Palestinians and in Congo and Somalia putting the most youngsters in peril, the U.N. children’s agency said Wednesday. UNICEF also expressed particular concern about their plight in Haiti, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Ukraine, where Russia has been put on the U.N. blacklist.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Children experienced the highest number of “grave violations” in conflicts verified by the United Nations in 2022, with the conflicts between Israeli and Palestinians and in Congo and Somalia putting the most youngsters in peril, the U.N. children’s agency said Wednesday.
UNICEF also expressed particular concern about their plight in Haiti, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Ukraine, where Russia has been put on the U.N. blacklist.
“Grave violations” include the recruitment and use of children by combatants, killings and injuries, sexual violence, abductions, and attacks on schools and hospitals.
Omar Abdi, UNICEF’s deputy executive director, told the U.N. Security Council the more than 27,000 grave violations, up from 24,000 the previous year, are the highest number verified by the U.N. since its monitoring reports began in 2005. The number of conflict situations “of concern” was also the highest — at 26.
Since the report, Abdi said, a serious conflict has erupted in Sudan where over 1 million children have been displaced by violent conflict and the U.N. has received reports that hundreds have been killed and injured. He also said UNICEF expects an increase in Palestinian children affected due to recent escalations in violence.
Government and parties to conflicts are not fulfilling their commitments to protect children, and “meaningful and unambiguous action” is needed, the UNICEF official said.
The U.N. special envoy for children in armed conflict, Virginia Gamba, told the council that the 27,180 grave violations in 2022 were carried out against 18,890 children and included 8,620 who were killed or injured, 7,622 who were recruited or used by governments or armed groups in conflicts, 3,985 who were abducted, 1,165, almost all of them girls, who were raped, forced into marriage or sexual slavery or sexually assaulted.
The United Nations also verified attacks on 1,163 schools and 647 hospitals, a 112% increase from 2021, she said.
While armed groups were responsible for 50% of grave violations, Gamba underscored that governments were the main perpetrators of the killing and maiming of children and of attacks on schools and hospitals.
Gamba said, for example, last year three girls were gang raped in South Sudan “during five days of terror,” many boys were killed by an explosive device at a school in Afghanistan, a 14-year-old girl in Myanmar was abducted and burned alive, and an airstrike in Ukraine left a girl with amputated limbs.
“We must do more to prevent and protect our children from the ravages of armed conflict,” she said.
U.S. deputy ambassador Jeffrey DeLaurentis said the report makes clear that the world’s nations “have not done nearly enough to protect children from the impacts of conflicts.” He said the United States is “keen” to see this issue “elevated, enhanced, and better integrated into all the work of the Security Council.”
DeLaurentis accused Russia of committing crimes against humanity in Ukraine, including against children, pointing to the many youngsters deported to Russia and forcibly separated from their families. And “Russia’s forces continue to attack areas where children are clearly present, including schools, hospitals and residential buildings," he said.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused Western media companies of cynically selecting the protection of children “for a dirty information campaign in order to slander the Russian Federation.”
He accused Guterres of making “a political decision” to put Russian forces on the U.N. blacklist and not Ukrainian armed forces, insisting there is “no factual basis” to label Russia a violator of children’s rights.
Nebenzia accused the Ukrainian military of killing and injuring children in Russian-occupied areas of Luhansk and Donetsk in the country’s east since 2014 and said Moscow’s complaints about Ukraine’s actions have been ignored by the U.N. and others. He said Russia has established a parliamentary commission to investigate alleged crimes against children by the Ukraine.
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