More Indian hospitals hit by doctors’ protest against alleged rape and murder

More Indian hospitals hit by doctors’ protest against alleged rape and murder
Doctors in India’s crowded and often squalid government hospitals sometimes also end up bearing the brunt of violence by those angered at medical services they see as falling short. (AFP)
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Updated 13 August 2024
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More Indian hospitals hit by doctors’ protest against alleged rape and murder

More Indian hospitals hit by doctors’ protest against alleged rape and murder
  • Protest rippled nationwide on Tuesday, joined by more than 8,000 government doctors in the western Maharashtra state
  • Thousands of patients were left stranded by similar protests in cities such as Lucknow and in Goa

KOLKATA: Hospital services were disrupted in several Indian cities on Tuesday, after the nationwide spread of a doctors’ protest against the alleged rape and murder of a 31-year-old doctor in the eastern city of Kolkata, authorities and media said.
Television images showed thousands of doctors marching on Monday to protest the incident at a government-run hospital, calling for justice for the victim and better security measures, paralyzing health services in West Bengal state.
The protest rippled nationwide on Tuesday, joined by more than 8,000 government doctors in the western Maharashtra state, home to the financial capital of Mumbai, halting work in all hospital departments except emergency services, media said.
In the capital, New Delhi, junior doctors wearing white coats held posters that read, “Doctors are not punching bags,” as they sat in protest outside a large government hospital to demand an investigation, Reuters Television images showed.
Thousands of patients were left stranded by similar protests in cities such as Lucknow, capital of the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, and in the western tourist resort state of Goa that crimped some hospital services, media said.
“Pedestrian working conditions, inhuman workloads and violence in the workplace are the reality,” the Indian Medical Association, the biggest grouping of doctors in the country, told Health Minister J P Nadda in a letter.
A health ministry spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Doctors maintain their workplace environment is unsafe, even after the weekend arrest of a police volunteer in Kolkata for the doctor’s murder, and the resignation of the principal of the medical college where it happened.
City police chief Vineet Kumar Goyal told reporters a case had been registered against the suspect under provisions of the law relating to rape and murder.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee told reporters she had given state police a deadline of Sunday to complete their investigation, or she would hand it to federal agencies.
Emergency services stayed suspended on Tuesday in almost all the government-run medical college hospitals in Kolkata, state official N S Nigam said, adding that the government was assessing the impact on health services.
Doctors in India’s crowded and often squalid government hospitals, who find themselves overworked and underpaid, sometimes also end up bearing the brunt of violence by those angered at medical services they see as falling short.

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Iran summons Afghan envoy for ‘disrespecting’ anthem

Iran summons Afghan envoy for ‘disrespecting’ anthem
Updated 14 sec ago
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Iran summons Afghan envoy for ‘disrespecting’ anthem

Iran summons Afghan envoy for ‘disrespecting’ anthem
  • Afghan visiting official remained seated as Iran’s national anthem played at a conference in Tehran
  • The visiting official later posted a video apology, describing sitting during anthems as Afghan custom

TEHRAN: Iran summoned the acting head of Afghanistan’s embassy Friday after saying a visiting Afghan official disrespected the country’s national anthem by not standing, days after a similar incident in Pakistan.
Following the incident at a conference in Tehran on Islamic unity, the Afghan delegate apologized, but said this was because music in public is banned by the Taliban.
An Iranian foreign ministry statement said a “strong protest” had been lodged after his “unconventional and unacceptable action.”
It accused Kabul’s representative to the Islamic Unity Conference of “disrespecting the national anthem of the Islamic Republic.”
The foreign ministry “condemned this action, which went against diplomatic custom.”
Afghanistan’s representative remained seated when Iran’s national anthem was played, mirroring a similar event involving Afghan officials in Pakistan.
“Apart from the obvious necessity of the guest respecting the symbols of the host country, paying respect to the national anthem of countries is internationally recognized behavior,” Iran’s statement added.
Islamabad on Tuesday summoned the Afghan charge d’affaires over “disrespect for the national anthem” by Afghanistan’s acting consul general and another official at an event in Peshawar on Monday, Pakistani officials said.
Pakistani media quoted a spokesman for Afghanistan’s consulate as saying the officials did not stand because of the music, and that no disrespect was meant.
“Because the anthem had music, the consul general and an official did not stand. We have banned our national anthem because of the music,” the Afghan spokesman was quoted as saying.
On Friday the Afghan official in Tehran for the conference posted a video apology, saying he meant no disrespect but that sitting during anthems is their custom.
Shiite-majority Iran shares a 900-kilometer (550-mile) border with Afghanistan, but has not officially recognized Taliban’s government since it came to power in August 2021 after US forces withdrew.


Rotterdam knife attack possibly a terrorist act, prosecutors say

Rotterdam knife attack possibly a terrorist act, prosecutors say
Updated 13 min 58 sec ago
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Rotterdam knife attack possibly a terrorist act, prosecutors say

Rotterdam knife attack possibly a terrorist act, prosecutors say
  • The 22-year-old man stabbed his first victim in a parking garage beneath Rotterdam’s Erasmus Bridge before moving to street level
  • Prosecutors said he had been charged with murder and attempted murder with a terrorist motive

AMSTERDAM: Dutch prosecutors on Friday said a knife-wielding assailant who allegedly stabbed and killed a man and wounded another in Rotterdam on Thursday night may have had a terrorist motive.
The 22-year-old man stabbed his first victim in a parking garage beneath Rotterdam’s Erasmus Bridge before moving to street level, where he fatally attacked another person, local media reported.
He was subsequently overpowered by bystanders and police and taken into custody.
Prosecutors said he had been charged with murder and attempted murder with a terrorist motive.
“Initial investigation shows the suspect was possibly driven by ideology,” the prosecutors said in a statement, as they said the man had shouted “Allahu Akbar,” which means “God is Greater” in Arabic, several times during the attack.
“But other motives cannot be excluded,” they added.
The victim who was killed was a 32-year-old man from Rotterdam, while the one who was wounded was a 33-year-old man from Switzerland, the prosecutors said.
The suspect lives in Amersfoort, a city located about 80 km (50 miles) from Rotterdam, they said.
De Telegraaf newspaper reported that a personal trainer who had been giving an outdoor class knocked the suspect unconscious with a squat stick that he had broken in two, and other bystanders threw chairs at him.
Witnesses described the suspect as carrying two large knives and targeting random individuals.


Russia charges soldiers with killing pro-Moscow US fighter

Russia charges soldiers with killing pro-Moscow US fighter
Updated 20 September 2024
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Russia charges soldiers with killing pro-Moscow US fighter

Russia charges soldiers with killing pro-Moscow US fighter
  • The authorities did not say what had motivated the soldiers to kill Russell Bentley
  • The Russian Investigative Committee said on Friday it had “established all the persons involved in the death of Russell Bentley and the circumstances of the offenses committed“

MOSCOW: Russia on Friday charged four of its soldiers serving in occupied Ukraine with torturing a US citizen living in Russian-held Donetsk who had fought with pro-Moscow forces since 2014.
It is rare instance for Russia to accuse active soldiers in Ukraine — who are glorified at home — of committing crimes.
The authorities did not say what had motivated the soldiers to kill Russell Bentley, who regularly appeared on pro-Kremlin social media channels, backing Moscow’s full-scale military offensive in Ukraine.
Known as “Texas,” 64-year-old Bentley was declared dead in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk in April. His wife said at the time he had been abducted and killed by Russian troops.
The Russian Investigative Committee said on Friday it had “established all the persons involved in the death of Russell Bentley and the circumstances of the offenses committed.”
It named the four soldiers involved as Vladislav Agaltsev, Vladimir Bazhin, Andrei Iordanov and Vitaly Vansyatsky.
They are accused of “using physical violence and torture, causing the death of a victim by negligence, as well as the concealment of a particularly serious crime by moving the remains of the deceased to another place,” the committee said.
According to the investigation, the soldiers tortured and killed Bentley in Donetsk on April 8.
Two of them then blew up a military car containing his body, before another moved the remains to cover up the crime, investigators said.
Moscow said the soldiers were “familiarising” themselves with the charge before the case is sent to court.
Bentley, from Austin in Texas, had served in the US army in the 1980s.
He often wore a cap, styled on Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, with a red badge bearing hammer and sickle.


Ukraine joins NATO drill to test anti-drone systems

Ukraine joins NATO drill to test anti-drone systems
Updated 47 min 7 sec ago
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Ukraine joins NATO drill to test anti-drone systems

Ukraine joins NATO drill to test anti-drone systems
  • The drills at a Dutch military base tested cutting-edge systems to detect and counter drones and assessed how they work together
  • The 11-day exercise ended with a demonstration of jamming and hacking drones in a week when their critical role in the Ukraine war was demonstrated once again

VREDEPEEL, Netherlands: NATO concluded a major anti-drone exercise this week, with Ukraine taking part for the first time as the Western alliance seeks to learn urgently from the rapid development and widespread use of unmanned systems in the war there.
The drills at a Dutch military base, involving more than 20 countries and some 50 companies, tested cutting-edge systems to detect and counter drones and assessed how they work together.
The 11-day exercise ended with a demonstration of jamming and hacking drones in a week when their critical role in the Ukraine war was demonstrated once again.
On Wednesday, a large Ukrainian drone attack triggered an earthquake-sized blast at a major Russian arsenal. The following day, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was ramping up drone production tenfold to nearly 1.4 million this year.
The proliferation of drones in the war – to destroy targets and survey the battlefield – has prompted NATO to increase its focus on the threat they could pose to the alliance.
“NATO takes this threat very, very seriously,” said Matt Roper, chief of the Joint Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Center at the alliance’s technology agency.
“This is not a domain we can afford to sit back and be passive on,” he said at the exercise site, Lt. Gen. Best Barracks in the east of The Netherlands.
Experts have warned NATO that it needs to catch up quickly on drone warfare.
“NATO has too few drones for a high-intensity fight against a peer adversary,” a report from the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank declared last September.
“It would be severely challenged to effectively integrate those it has in a contested environment.”

THREAT EVOLUTION
The drills that wrapped up on Thursday — complete with ice cream for onlookers provided by a radar company — were the fourth annual iteration of the exercise.
Claudio Palestini, the co-chair of a NATO working group on unmanned systems, said the exercise had adapted to trends such as the transformation of FPV (first-person view) drones — originally designed for civilian racers – into deadly weapons.
“Every year, we see an evolution of the threat with the introduction of new technology,” he said. “But also we see a lot of capabilities (to counter drones) that are becoming more mature.”
In a demonstration on Thursday, two small FPV drones whizzed and whined at high speed through the blue sky to dart around a military all-terrain vehicle before their signal was jammed.
Such electronic warfare is widespread in Ukraine. But it is less effective against long-range reconnaissance drones, a technology developer at Ukraine’s defense ministry said.
The official, giving only his first name of Yaroslav for security reasons, said his team had developed kamikaze drones to destroy such craft – a much cheaper option than firing missiles, which Ukraine had previously done.
“You need to run fast,” he said of the race to counter the impact of drones. “Technology which you develop is there for three months, maybe six months. After, it’s obsolete.”


Norway to increase, extend aid to Ukraine

Norway to increase, extend aid to Ukraine
Updated 20 September 2024
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Norway to increase, extend aid to Ukraine

Norway to increase, extend aid to Ukraine
  • The extension brings the aggregate aid package to 135 billion kroner from a previous total of 75 billion kroner through 2027
  • To get the increased package through parliament, Store’s center-left minority government will need the support of the opposition

OSLO: Norway will increase civilian aid to Ukraine by five billion kroner ($475 million) this year and extend its aid package by three years to 2030, the prime minister said Friday.
The extension brings the aggregate aid package to 135 billion kroner from a previous total of 75 billion kroner through 2027.
The Scandinavian country had already pledged 22 billion kroner in military and civilian aid for this year, and the additional five billion kroner will be dedicated to “important civilian needs, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store told journalists after meeting parliamentary leaders.
“We are living through a very dangerous situation in Europe,” Store said.
To get the increased package through parliament, Store’s center-left minority government will need the support of the opposition, which has largely backed greater assistance to Ukraine.
Norway is a major gas and oil exporter, and has benefitted from the run-up in prices brought about by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
According to a finance ministry document seen by AFP Thursday, Germany is planning to increase its military aid to Ukraine by almost 400 million euros ($445 million) this year, on top of the 7.5 billion euros it had already earmarked.