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Five new arrests in attacks against Israeli soccer supporters, Dutch police say 

Five new arrests in attacks against Israeli soccer supporters, Dutch police say 
Dutch police patrol after riots in Amsterdam, Netherlands, November 11, 2024. (REUTERS)
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Updated 12 November 2024
Reuters
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Five new arrests in attacks against Israeli soccer supporters, Dutch police say 

Five new arrests in attacks against Israeli soccer supporters, Dutch police say 
  • The attacks occurred early on Friday on Israeli soccer supporters following a match between visiting Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax Amsterdam
  • The suspects are men aged 18 to 37 and living in the Netherlands
Updated 12 November 2024
Reuters
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THE HAGUE: Dutch police on Monday said they had arrested five more people for their suspected involvement in attacks on Israeli football supporters late last week which authorities have condemned as antisemitic.
The suspects are men aged 18 to 37 and living in the Netherlands, police said in a statement. Previously, 63 suspects had been arrested.
Earlier on Monday Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof vowed that the Netherlands would focus all its efforts on bringing perpetrators of the violence to justice.
“The images and reports for Amsterdam and what we’ve seen this weekend of antisemitic attacks against Israelis and Jews are nothing short of shocking and reprehensible,” Schoof told a press conference, adding that police and prosecutors are still piecing together the details of what happened.
The attacks occurred early on Friday on Israeli soccer supporters following a match between visiting Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax Amsterdam left at least five people injured. They were denounced as antisemitic by the Dutch authorities and foreign leaders including Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Following the attacks, Israel sent extra planes to bring Maccabi supporters home
Reacting to reports that there had also been altercations between Maccabi supporters and locals before the match on Thursday, Schoof said there was no justification for the violence against Israeli supporters.
Dutch police have said Maccabi fans on Wednesday attacked a taxi and burned a Palestinian flag in Amsterdam. On the day of the game, Maccabi supporters were filmed chanting anti-Arab slogans in videos verified by Reuters.
“We are well aware of what happened earlier with Maccabi supporters but we think that’s of a different category and we condemn any violence as well, but that is no excuse whatsoever for what happened later on that night in the attacks on Jews in Amsterdam.” Schoof said.Dozens of people armed with sticks and firecrackers set a tram on fire in Amsterdam on Monday, police said, while the city is facing tensions following violence last week targeting fans of an Israeli soccer club.
Police said the fire was quickly extinguished and riot officers cleared the square. Images online showed people damaging property and setting firecrackers.
Police said it was not clear who started the unrest and whether it was related to what happened last week. 

Topics: Amsterdam Israel

Afghan economy shows modest signs of growth but recovery remains fragile — World Bank

Afghan economy shows modest signs of growth but recovery remains fragile — World Bank
Updated 9 sec ago
AP
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Afghan economy shows modest signs of growth but recovery remains fragile — World Bank

Afghan economy shows modest signs of growth but recovery remains fragile — World Bank
  • Financial institution says modest GDP growth of 2.7 percent was driven by private consumption
  • Partial recovery, coupled with falling food prices, helped to gradually improve household welfare
Updated 9 sec ago
AP

WASHINGTON: Afghanistan’s economy is showing modest signs of growth after two years of severe contraction, the World Bank said this week. 

In its latest development update issued late Wednesday, the financial institution said modest GDP growth of 2.7 percent was driven by private consumption. The partial recovery, coupled with falling food prices, helped to gradually improve household welfare.

Before the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, Afghanistan’s economy relied heavily on foreign aid and corruption was rife. Their takeover three years ago sent the economy into a tailspin, as billions in international funds were frozen, and tens of thousands of highly skilled Afghans fled the country and took their money with them.

Afghan’s exports remained stable in 2023-24 but imports surged, creating a widening trade deficit, according to the World Bank. This deficit, exacerbated by dependence on imports for essential goods like fuel, food and machinery, could pose a risk to the country’s economic stability.

Faris Hadad-Zervos, the World Bank’s country director for Afghanistan, said long-term growth prospects required tapping into the substantial potential of the domestic private sector and improving the overall business environment.

“Key to this is increased investment, providing access to finance to small businesses, and supporting educated and skilled women entrepreneurs so their businesses can thrive,” said Hadad-Zervos. “Without this, the country risks prolonged stagnation with limited prospects for sustainable development.”

The update comes days after media reports that the Taliban have ordered educational institutions to stop providing medical training to women and girls. The Taliban have neither confirmed the order nor responded to the reports.

On Thursday, the head of the UN children’s agency UNICEF said she was deeply alarmed by the reported restrictions.

UNICEF was determining the veracity of these differing accounts and welcomed efforts to address the issue, said the agency’s executive director Catherine Russell.

If confirmed, this ban was expected to immediately halt the medical education of thousands of women and jeopardize women and girls’ access to health care, she added.

“It would not only further limit the ability of women to contribute to society and earn an income but would also have far-reaching consequences for the health of the Afghan population. Lives would be lost,” she warned.

Philippine police checking reports that a kidnapped American has died after being shot

Philippine police checking reports that a kidnapped American has died after being shot
Updated 05 December 2024
AP
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Philippine police checking reports that a kidnapped American has died after being shot

Philippine police checking reports that a kidnapped American has died after being shot
  • Criminal complaints of kidnapping have been filed against several suspects
  • Security problems have long hounded the southern Philippines
Updated 05 December 2024
AP

MANILA, Philippines: Philippine police officials said Thursday they are checking reports that a kidnapped American died after being shot twice while resisting his Oct. 17 abduction by gunmen in the country’s south.
Elliot Onil Eastman, 26, from Vermont, was shot twice with an M16 rifle while trying to fight off his four kidnappers, who posed as police officers, in the coastal town of Sibuco in Zamboanga del Norte province, police said.
The kidnappers dragged him to a motorboat and sped off, according to earlier police reports.
A massive search for Eastman and his abductors led to the arrest of a number of suspects, but he has not been found. Three suspects were killed in a gunbattle with police in the south last month.
Regional police spokesperson Lt. Col. Ramoncelio Sawan said investigators received information from a relative of one of the suspects that Eastman died due to gunshot wounds in the thigh and abdomen while being taken away by his abductors.
The kidnappers decided to throw his body into the sea after he died, the relative said. The information about Eastman’s death was later corroborated by a key suspect in the kidnapping who was arrested recently, and his sworn statement has been submitted to government prosecutors, Sawan said.
Criminal complaints of kidnapping have been filed against several suspects, he said.
“We are constrained to believe that he has died. All of the information that we have points to that,” Sawan said. But he added that without the victim’s body, “we’re still leaving a little bit of hope that it may not be the case” and police would continue their investigation.
Philippine police have informed Eastman’s Filipino wife and the US Embassy in Manila about his reported death, Sawan said.
The embassy said it’s aware of the police report and is coordinating with Philippine authorities, but did not comment further due to privacy considerations.
Eastman traveled out of the Philippines and returned to Sibuco to attend his wife’s graduation when he was kidnapped. He had been posting Facebook videos of his life in Sibuco, a poor, remote coastal town, where the suspects spotted him, police earlier said.
They said the suspects appeared to be common criminals who did not belong to any Muslim rebel groups which have been accused of ransom kidnappings in the past.
Security problems have long hounded the southern Philippines, the homeland of a Muslim minority in the largely Roman Catholic nation.
The southern third of the Philippines has bountiful resources but has long been hamstrung by poverty, insurgencies and outlaws.
A 2014 peace agreement between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the largest of several Muslim separatist groups, has considerably eased widespread fighting in the south. Relentless military offensives have weakened smaller armed groups such as the Abu Sayyaf, reducing kidnappings, bombings and other violence.
The Abu Sayyaf has targeted Americans and other Western tourists and missionaries, most of whom were freed after ransoms were paid. A few were killed, including American Guillermo Sobero, who was beheaded on the southern island of Basilan, and a US missionary, Martin Burnham, who was killed while Philippine army forces were trying to rescue him and his wife, Gracia Burnham, in 2002 in a rainforest near Sibuco.

Topics: crime Philippines

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French PM meets Macron to resign after no-confidence vote

French PM meets Macron to resign after no-confidence vote
Updated 05 December 2024
AFP
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French PM meets Macron to resign after no-confidence vote

French PM meets Macron to resign after no-confidence vote
Updated 05 December 2024
AFP

PARIS: French Prime Minister Michel Barnier on Thursday was meeting Emmanuel Macron to submit his resignation after losing a vote of no confidence in parliament, with the president urgently seeking ways to halt growing political and financial chaos.
Poised to be contemporary France’s shortest-serving premier, Barnier arrived at the Elysee Palace just after 0900 GMT for the resignation formality, with the outgoing premier and government constitutionally obliged to step down after the defeat in parliament.
A majority of lawmakers on Wednesday supported the no-confidence vote proposed by the hard left and backed by the far right headed by Marine Le Pen.
Barnier’s record-quick ejection comes after snap parliamentary elections this summer, which resulted in a hung parliament with no political force able to form an overall majority and the far right holding the key to the government’s survival.
The trigger for Barnier’s ouster was his 2025 budget plan including austerity measures that were unacceptable to a majority in parliament, but that he argued were necessary to stabilize France’s finances.
On Monday he had forced through a social security financing bill without a vote.
The successful no-confidence motion canceled the government’s entire financing plan, leading to an automatic renewal of the current budget into next year, unless any new government can somehow rush through approval of a new budget by Christmas — an unlikely scenario.


“France probably won’t have a 2025 budget,” said ING Economics in a note, predicting that the country “is entering a new era of political instability.”
Moody’s, a ratings agency, warned that Barnier’s fall “deepens the country’s political stalemate” and “reduces the probability of a consolidation of public finances.”
The Paris stock exchange fell at the opening on Thursday before recovering to show small gains, while the yields on French government bonds were again under upward pressure in debt markets.
Macron now has the unenviable task of picking a viable successor.
The president will address the nation at 8:00 p.m. (1900 GMT), his office said.
Macron has more than two years of his presidential term left, but some opponents are calling on him to resign.


National Assembly Speaker Yael Braun-Pivet on Thursday urged Macron to waste no time in choosing a new premier, saying that France could not be allowed to “drift” for any length of time.
There was no indication early on Thursday of how quickly Macron would appoint Barnier’s successor, nor what their political leanings might be.
Loyalist Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu and Macron’s centrist ally Francois Bayrou have been touted as possible contenders, as has former Socialist premier and interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve.
With the support of the far right, a majority of 331 MPs in the 577-member chamber voted to oust the government on Wednesday night.
It was the first successful no-confidence vote since a defeat for Georges Pompidou’s government in 1962, when Charles de Gaulle was president.
Macron flew back into Paris just ahead of the vote after wrapping up a three-day state visit to Saudi Arabia, an apparent world away from the domestic crisis.



“We are now calling on Macron to go,” Mathilde Panot, head of the parliamentary faction of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, told reporters.
She urged “early presidential elections” to solve the deepening political crisis.
But taking care not to crow over the government’s fall, Le Pen said in a television interview that her party — once a new premier is appointed — “would let them work” and help create a “budget that is acceptable for everyone.”
Laurent Wauquiez, the head of right-wing deputies in parliament, said the far right and hard left bore the responsibility for a no-confidence vote.
Barnier is the fifth prime minister to serve under Macron since he came to power in 2017, with every premier serving a successively shorter period.
Given the composition of the National Assembly, there is no guarantee that Barnier’s successor would last any longer.
Strike calls across transport, education and other public sector services were kept in place on Thursday despite the disappearance of the austerity budget that has prompted anger.
The plunge into more uncertainty comes ahead of the reopening of the Notre-Dame cathedral on Saturday after a 2019 fire, a major international event hosted by Macron.
Guests include Donald Trump on his first foreign trip since he was elected US president.

Topics: France

US’s Blinken, Russia’s Lavrov to face off at OSCE meeting in Malta

US’s Blinken, Russia’s Lavrov to face off at OSCE meeting in Malta
Updated 05 December 2024
Reuters
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US’s Blinken, Russia’s Lavrov to face off at OSCE meeting in Malta

US’s Blinken, Russia’s Lavrov to face off at OSCE meeting in Malta
Updated 05 December 2024
Reuters AFP

VIENNA: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his outgoing US counterpart Antony Blinken are due to face off over the war in Ukraine on Thursday at an annual meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Malta.

Lavrov on Thursday arrived at an OSCE summit in Malta, on his first visit to an EU state since his country’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The diplomat did not comment to reporters as he made his way into the meeting of ministers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Ta’Qali, near Valetta.

While Ukraine will be the dominant political issue, the meeting is due to formally approve last-minute agreements reached on issues including senior staff positions at the security and rights body where Western powers often accuse Russia of flouting human rights and other international norms.
The gathering of foreign ministers and other officials from 57 participating states in North America, Europe and Central Asia is overshadowed this year by the return of US President-elect Donald Trump, whose advisers are floating proposals to end the war that would cede large parts of Ukraine to Russia.
With Trump due to take office in just over a month, Western powers plan to reiterate their support for Ukraine while Russia is likely to renew its criticism of the organization. Lavrov said last year the OSCE was “essentially being turned into an appendage of NATO and the European Union.”
It is Lavrov’s first trip to the European Union since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The OSCE is the successor to a body set up during the Cold War for the east and west to engage with each other. In recent years, however, and especially since it invaded Ukraine, Russia has used what is effectively a veto each country has to block many key decisions, often crippling the organization.
This year, however, the countries blocking agreement on the OSCE budget are Armenia and Azerbaijan rather than Russia, diplomats say, over issues related to their conflict in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Diplomats say a deal was reached this week to fill four senior OSCE positions including that of secretary general, which will be taken up by Turkiye’s Feridun Sinirlioglu, who was foreign minister in a caretaker government in 2015.
The most important annual decision at the OSCE — which country will next hold its annually rotating chairmanship — has long been settled, since Finland will hold it for the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act that lay the foundation for the current OSCE.

Topics: Russia US

Taiwan official says China trying to set a ‘red line’ for incoming Trump government

Taiwan official says China trying to set a ‘red line’ for incoming Trump government
Updated 05 December 2024
Reuters
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Taiwan official says China trying to set a ‘red line’ for incoming Trump government

Taiwan official says China trying to set a ‘red line’ for incoming Trump government
Updated 05 December 2024
Reuters

TAIPEI: China is trying to set a “red line” for the incoming Trump administration and US allies by stepping up military activities in the region, a senior Taiwan security official said, including likely war games this weekend around the island.
China, which claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory over Taipei’s rejection, has held two rounds of war games around the island so far this year, and its forces operate nearby on a daily basis.
The official confirmed concerns expressed by other security officials in the region who have previously told Reuters that China could launch new drills to coincide with Taiwan President Lai Ching-te’s trip to the Pacific this week which included visits to Hawaii and the US territory of Guam.
“They want to clearly establish that the First Island Chain is China’s red line and its sphere of control before the new US government takes office on Jan. 20,” the official told a briefing in Taipei, offering the government’s assessment of China’s activities.
The First Island Chain is an area that runs from Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo, enclosing China’s coastal seas.
Neither China’s Taiwan Affairs Office nor its defense ministry responded to a request for comment.
The Taiwan official, briefing on condition of anonymity to be able to speak more freely, said China could launch new war games shortly before or after Lai’s return to Taipei from the Pacific on Friday.
“They want to tell the new US government that this area is controlled by China and that you must discuss with China everything that happens here,” the official said, pointing to recent Chinese military activities around Taiwan including joint maneuvers with Russia near the island’s east coast earlier this week.
“They want other countries — the United States or Europe — to know that this is their sphere of influence and that they should be taken seriously.”
China has deployed close to 40 vessels in the region this week, including a Chinese aircraft carrier group led by Liaoning in the East China Sea as well as other naval and coast guard boats in the South China Sea.
Reuters first reported that a north bound Russian naval fleet on Monday approached close to Taiwan’s contiguous zone 24 nautical miles (45 km) off its southeastern coasts and conducted joint simulated attacks on “foreign vessels and aircraft” with a Chinese destroyer nearby.
China urged the United States last week to exercise the “utmost caution” on relations with Taiwan, ahead of Lai’s Pacific tour. Beijing opposes any foreign interactions or visits by Taiwan leaders.
Lai and his government reject Beijing’s sovereignty claims, saying only the island’s people can decide their future.

Topics: Taiwan China US

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