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China foreign minister says cause of conflict is ‘injustice’ against Palestinians

China foreign minister says cause of conflict is ‘injustice’ against Palestinians
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, not pictured, speak during a press conference following the EU-China High-Level Strategic Dialogue, in Beijing, China, Friday Oct. 13, 2023. (Reuters)
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Updated 14 October 2023
AFP
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China foreign minister says cause of conflict is ‘injustice’ against Palestinians

China foreign minister says cause of conflict is ‘injustice’ against Palestinians
Updated 14 October 2023
AFP
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BEIJING: China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Friday that the cause of the Israel-Hamas conflict was “historical injustice” against Palestinians, as he met with the EU’s foreign policy chief in Beijing.

“The root of this problem lies in the long delay in the realization of Palestine’s aspiration to establish an independent state, and in the fact that the historical injustice suffered by the Palestinian people has not been corrected,” Wang said after holding a meeting with Josep Borrell.

Topics: War on Gaza China Palestinians

Sweden charges Qur’an burners with hate crime

Sweden charges Qur’an burners with hate crime
Updated 6 sec ago
AFP
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Sweden charges Qur’an burners with hate crime

Sweden charges Qur’an burners with hate crime
  • Relations between Sweden and several Middle Eastern countries were strained by the pair’s protests
Updated 6 sec ago
AFP
STOCKHOLM: Swedish prosecutors on Wednesday charged two men with inciting ethnic hatred over several protests involving the burning of Qur’ans in 2023, which sparked widespread outrage in Muslim countries.
Salwan Momika, a Christian Iraqi who burned Qur’ans at a slew of protests, and co-protester Salwan Najem were charged with “agitation against an ethnic group” on four occasions in the summer of 2023.
“Both men are prosecuted for having on these four occasions made statements and treated the Qur’an in a manner intended to express contempt for Muslims because of their faith,” senior prosecutor Anna Hankkio said in a statement.
According to the charge sheet, the duo desecrated the Qur’an, including burning it, while making derogatory remarks about Muslims — in one case outside a Stockholm mosque.
“In my opinion, the men’s statements and actions fall under the provisions on agitation against an ethnic or national group and it is important that this matter is tried in court,” the prosecutor added.
Relations between Sweden and several Middle Eastern countries were strained by the pair’s protests.
Iraqi protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad twice in July 2023, starting fires within the compound on the second occasion.
In August last year, Sweden’s intelligence service Sapo raised its threat level to four on a scale of five after the Qur’an burnings had made the country a “prioritized target.”
The Swedish government condemned the desecrations while noting the country’s constitutionally protected freedom of speech and assembly laws.
Earlier this month, prosecutors charged Swedish-Danish right-wing activist Rasmus Paludan with the same crime over a 2022 protest in the southern city of Malmo, which also included burning the Qur’an.
In October 2023, a Swedish court convicted a man of inciting ethnic hatred with a 2020 Qur’an burning, the first time the country’s court system had tried the charge for desecrating Islam’s holy book.
Prosecutors have previously said that under Swedish law, the burning of a Qur’an can be seen as a critique of the book and the religion, and thus be protected under free speech.
However, depending on the context and statements made at the time, it can also be considered “agitation against an ethnic group.”

Two more crew members from Lynch’s yacht under investigation, source says

Two more crew members from Lynch’s yacht under investigation, source says
Updated 12 min 54 sec ago
Reuters
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Two more crew members from Lynch’s yacht under investigation, source says

Two more crew members from Lynch’s yacht under investigation, source says
  • Ship engineer Tim Parker Eaton and sailor Matthew Griffith are being investigated over the same crimes
  • The Bayesian is lying on its right side, at a depth of around 50 meters
Updated 12 min 54 sec ago
Reuters

PALERMO: Italian prosecutors are investigating two more crew members from British tech tycoon Mike Lynch’s yacht, along with its captain, in connection with the vessel’s sinking over a week ago, a judicial source said on Wednesday.
Lynch and six other people were killed when the British-flagged Bayesian, a 56-meter-long (184-foot) yacht, capsized and went down on Aug. 19 within minutes of being hit by a pre-dawn storm while anchored off northern Sicily.
On Monday, the boat’s 51-year-old captain James Cutfield, a New Zealander, was put under investigation for manslaughter and shipwreck. Cutfield declined to respond to prosecutors during questioning on Tuesday.
Ship engineer Tim Parker Eaton and sailor Matthew Griffith are being investigated over the same crimes, the source said, adding that Parker Eaton is suspected of having failed to protect the yacht’s engine room and operating systems.
Griffith was on watch duty on the night of the incident, the source said.
Being investigated does not imply guilt and does not mean formal charges will follow.
The sinking has puzzled naval marine experts, who said a vessel like the Bayesian, built by Italian high-end yacht manufacturer Perini, should have withstood the storm and, in any case, should not have sunk as quickly as it did.
Prosecutors in the town of Termini Imerese, near Palermo, have said their investigation would take time, and would require the wreck to be salvaged from the sea. The Bayesian is lying on its right side, at a depth of around 50 meters (164 feet).

Topics: Italy

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Poland says students arrested in Nigeria have been released

Poland says students arrested in Nigeria have been released
Updated 38 min 23 sec ago
Reuters
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Poland says students arrested in Nigeria have been released

Poland says students arrested in Nigeria have been released
Updated 38 min 23 sec ago
Reuters

WARSAW: A group of Polish students who were arrested in Nigeria have been released, the foreign ministry in Warsaw said on Wednesday.
Nigeria said earlier this month that it had arrested seven Polish nationals for raising Russian flags during anti-government protests in the northern state of Kano.
Following their arrest, a Polish foreign ministry spokesperson rejected the accusation that they were waving the flags and said they were merely in the vicinity of the protest.
“The Polish students have been released and are in Kano,” the Polish foreign ministry said in a post on social media platform X. “Thank you to everyone involved in the release of the Polish citizens!“
Hundreds of thousands of Nigerians had been protesting since Aug. 1 against President Bola Tinubu’s painful economic reforms that have seen a partial end to fuel and electricity subsidies, currency devaluation and inflation touching three-decade highs.
Some protesters waved Russian flags during protests in northern states, underscoring concerns about increased Russian activity in western Africa.

Topics: Nigeria Protests Poland students arrests

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Kremlin, dismissing Zelensky’s talk of a peace plan, says Russia will keep fighting in Ukraine

Kremlin, dismissing Zelensky’s talk of a peace plan, says Russia will keep fighting in Ukraine
Updated 32 min 27 sec ago
Reuters
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Kremlin, dismissing Zelensky’s talk of a peace plan, says Russia will keep fighting in Ukraine

Kremlin, dismissing Zelensky’s talk of a peace plan, says Russia will keep fighting in Ukraine
  • Ukrainian president says he would present his plan to US President Joe Biden and his two potential successors
Updated 32 min 27 sec ago
Reuters

MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Wednesday dismissed talk by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about a plan he has to end the war and said Russia would continue what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Zelensky said on Tuesday he would present his plan — full details of which he did not publicly disclose — to US President Joe Biden and his two potential successors.

Zelensky, addressing a news conference, said Kyiv’s three-week-old incursion into Russia’s Kursk region was part of his plan, but that it also comprised other steps on the economic and diplomatic fronts.

The idea, said Zelensky — who is pressing Washington to allow his forces to use long-range US-supplied arms to strike deep inside Russia — was to force Moscow to end the war.

“This is not the first time that we have heard such statements from representatives of the Kyiv regime. We are aware of the nature of this Kyiv regime,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about Zelensky’s plan.

“We are continuing our special military operation and will achieve all of our goals.”

Russia is currently engaged in repelling the Ukrainian incursion that began on Aug. 6, and is pressing ahead with its own offensive in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

Peskov also said that Russia supported India’s view on the need for a peaceful settlement, but said it was “more than obvious” that there was no basis for talks right now.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday that he had told Russian President Vladimir Putin in a phone call that he backed an early, peaceful resolution to the Ukraine conflict, days after Modi held talks with Zelensky in Kyiv.

Topics: Russia-Ukraine Conflict Russia Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky

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Bangladesh lifts ban on main Islamist party

Bangladesh lifts ban on main Islamist party
Updated 28 August 2024
AFP
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Bangladesh lifts ban on main Islamist party

Bangladesh lifts ban on main Islamist party
  • Jamaat-e-Islami ban was imposed in the final days of the rule of now ousted autocrat Sheikh Hasina
  • Jamaat was also barred from participating in elections in 2014, 2018 and again in January this year
Updated 28 August 2024
AFP

DHAKA: Bangladesh’s new authorities on Wednesday lifted a ban on the country’s largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, imposed in the final days of the rule of now ousted autocrat Sheikh Hasina.
“The government... has canceled the previous order of August 1, 2024 that banned Bangladesh’s Jamaat e Islami,” the order read. “It will come into effect immediately.”
Jamaat-e-Islami, which has millions of supporters, was banned from contesting polls in 2013 after high court judges ruled its charter violated the secular constitution of the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people.
Jamaat was also barred from participating in elections in 2014, 2018 and again in January this year, when 76-year-old Hasina won her fifth term in widely discredited polls without a credible opposition.
Hasina’s government then banned the party outright under an anti-terrorism act on August 1, just four days before she was ousted from power after weeks of student-led protests, fleeing to India by helicopter.
The government order said it had lifted the ban, including on the party’s student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir, because there was “no specific evidence of involvement with terrorism and violence.”
Jamaat is one of the country’s main political parties, along with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
It is unclear what strength Hasina’s once all-powerful party, the Awami League, still holds.

Topics: Bangladesh

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Latest updates

UK’s Islamic banking assets surge 26 percent to $8.2bn in 2023: Fitch Ratings
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Two more crew members from Lynch’s yacht under investigation, source says
Two more crew members from Lynch’s yacht under investigation, source says
Poland says students arrested in Nigeria have been released
Poland says students arrested in Nigeria have been released
Kremlin, dismissing Zelensky’s talk of a peace plan, says Russia will keep fighting in Ukraine
Kremlin, dismissing Zelensky’s talk of a peace plan, says Russia will keep fighting in Ukraine
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