More Bangladeshis choose to leave Lebanon as Israel violates ceasefire

Special More Bangladeshis choose to leave Lebanon as Israel violates ceasefire
A Bangladeshi national carries luggage on a trolley upon his arrival from Lebanon, at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka on October 21, 2024. (AFP file photo)
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Updated 07 December 2024
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More Bangladeshis choose to leave Lebanon as Israel violates ceasefire

More Bangladeshis choose to leave Lebanon as Israel violates ceasefire
  • Almost 1,000 Bangladeshis have returned to their country on special flights
  • Bangladeshis in Lebanon are the largest group of migrants from Asia

DHAKA: Bangladeshis living and working in Lebanon continue to return home, saying they fear Israeli attacks that have not stopped despite last week’s ceasefire agreement between the two countries.

There are about 100,000 Bangladeshis in Lebanon — the largest group of migrants from Asia. Thousands have been displaced since the beginning of Israel’s invasion of the country’s south in October and strikes on other cities.

Last month, a Bangladeshi man was killed by an Israeli strike while he stopped at a coffee shop on his way to work in Beirut.

Almost 1,000 Bangladeshis have since returned to their country on special repatriation flights financed by the Bangladeshi government and the International Organization for Migration. The latest flight reached Dhaka on Thursday night.

“The number of intended returnees is increasing,” Mohammad Anwar Hossain, first secretary of the Bangladeshi embassy in Beirut, told Arab News.

“Despite the ceasefire agreement, a tense situation still persists in Lebanon. We have observed Israeli surveillance drones over Beirut.”

Although a US-brokered ceasefire has been in place since last week, it has been repeatedly breached by Israel. A source from the UN’s peacekeeping force told CNN on Monday that Israeli forces had violated the agreement “approximately 100 times.”

Shahnaz Begum, who was among 105 Bangladeshis evacuated on Thursday, decided to leave her domestic helper job behind despite being her family’s sole breadwinner.

“Israel started bombing maybe one or two days after the announcement of the ceasefire,” she said.

“For over two months, we’ve been counting the days until we can return home. I can’t remember the last time I had a good night’s sleep. Every moment felt like it could be the last.”

Israeli air and ground raids, many of which have targeted civilian and medical infrastructure, have killed more than 4,000 people since October, according to Lebanese Health Ministry estimates. More than 16,000 have been injured.

Liton Rahman, who for the past seven years worked as a driver in Jezzine, southern Lebanon, was hopeful that the ceasefire would allow him to stay longer in Lebanon. But the wait was “in vain,” he said.

“I had been considering staying for a few more months if the ceasefire had truly been effective. But, unfortunately, Israel continues its attacks on various parts of southern Lebanon ... I am forced to return home. Otherwise, I might end up being counted as collateral damage.”


Balkan air pollution crisis threatens public health, EU membership goals

Balkan air pollution crisis threatens public health, EU membership goals
Updated 2 sec ago
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Balkan air pollution crisis threatens public health, EU membership goals

Balkan air pollution crisis threatens public health, EU membership goals
  • Old coal plants, cars keep Balkan pollution high
  • Economic hardship hinders progress toward reducing emissions
OBILIC: For 30 years, Shemsi Gara operated a giant digger in a Kosovo coal mine, churning up toxic dust that covered his face and got into his airways. Home life wasn’t much better: the power plants that the mine supplies constantly spew fumes over his village.
Gara died on Sunday aged 55 after three years of treatment failed to contain his lung cancer. In his final days, unable to walk, he lay on a couch at home, gaunt and in pain, as a machine pumped oxygen into his dying body.
“I kept telling him I wanted to help, but I couldn’t,” said his wife Xhejlane, who mourned in her living room with friends on Wednesday. “He would say ‘Only God knows the pain I have’.”
As much of the world moves to reduce the use of fossil fuels, pollution in Western Balkan countries remains stubbornly high due to household heating, outdated coal plants, old cars, and a lack of money to tackle the problem.
Relatively small cities such as Serbia’s capital Belgrade and Bosnia’s capital Sarajevo have frequently topped daily global pollution charts, according to websites that track air quality worldwide.
This has costly health impacts, and could also jeopardize such countries’ prospects of joining the European Union, which has stricter emissions standards.
“There are no resources in the region for the reduction of air pollution,” said Mirko Popovic, a director with the Renewables and Environmental Regulatory Institute think-tank in Belgrade.
In the EU, net greenhouse gas emissions have dropped by about 40 percent since 1990, driven by the embrace of renewable energy, a European Commission report said in November.
Western Balkan nations have pledged to reduce carbon emissions but economic hardship has slowed progress.
Kosovo, one of Europe’s poorest countries, generates more than 90 percent of its power from coal. The World Bank estimates that a transition to a coal-free economy will cost 4.5 billion euros.

SMOG
The impact of pollution is clear across the region, especially in winter.
Smog has cloaked Belgrade this week, while Sarajevo sits in a valley that acts as a pollution trap. The Bosnian capital’s air quality was classed as “hazardous” on Tuesday, the worst in the world, according to IQAir, which tracks pollution levels.
In North Macedonia’s capital Skopje, mask-wearing locals often lose sight of nearby snow-capped mountains for days.
The rate of deaths attributable to ambient pollution is relatively high — 114 per 100,000 people in Bosnia and around 100 in Serbia and Montenegro, World Health Organization data show, compared with just 45 in Germany and 29 in France.
Gara was buried on Monday in a cemetery in Obilic, outside Kosovo’s capital Pristina. From the graveside, mourners could hear the chug of a nearby conveyor belt transporting coal from the mine to the power plants.
Gara’s doctor, Haki Jashari, blamed Gara’s cancer on his years at the coal mine, and on the polluting power plants.
Cancer rates more than doubled in Obilic over the last two years, Jashari said — the result, he added, of a generation of exposure to pollutants. He expects it will get worse.
Kosovo’s energy ministry told Reuters it was committed to reducing emissions and was investing in renewable energy projects and upgrading existing plants.
Jashari only wishes more could have been done sooner.
“They would have shut the plants down if we were part of the EU. It is unacceptable.”

India says 'open' to return of undocumented immigrants in US

India says 'open' to return of undocumented immigrants in US
Updated 23 January 2025
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India says 'open' to return of undocumented immigrants in US

India says 'open' to return of undocumented immigrants in US
  • India was working with the Trump administration on the deportation of around 18,000 Indians

Washington: India is prepared to take back its citizens residing illegally in the United States, foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has said after meeting the top diplomat of President Donald Trump’s new administration.
Jaishankar’s remarks came after a meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington on Tuesday a day after Trump’s inauguration.
Trump issued a raft of executive orders this week that aim to clamp down on illegal immigration and expedite his goal of deporting millions of immigrants.
Jaishankar said New Delhi was open to taking back undocumented Indians and was in the process of verifying those in the United States who could be deported to India.
“We want Indian talent and Indian skills to have the maximum opportunity at the global level. At the same time, we are also very firmly opposed to illegal mobility and illegal migration,” Jaishankar told a group of Indian reporters in Washington on Wednesday.
“So, with every country, and the US is no exception, we have always taken the view that if any of our citizens are here illegally, and if we are sure that they are our citizens, we have always been open to their legitimate return to India.”
Jaishankar was responding to a query on news reports that India was working with the Trump administration on the deportation of around 18,000 Indians who are either undocumented, or have overstayed their visas.
Rubio had “emphasized the Trump administration’s desire to work with India to advance economic ties and address concerns related to irregular migration,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a readout after Tuesday’s meeting.
India is the world’s fifth-largest economy and enjoys world-beating GDP growth, but hundreds of thousands of its citizens still leave the country each year seeking better opportunities abroad.
While its diaspora spans the globe, the United States remains the destination of choice.
The most recent US census showed its Indian-origin population had grown by 50 percent to 4.8 million in the decade to 2020, while more than a third of the nearly 1.3 million Indian students studying abroad in 2022 were in the United States.


As Trump declares ‘Gulf of America,’ US enters name wars

As Trump declares ‘Gulf of America,’ US enters name wars
Updated 23 January 2025
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As Trump declares ‘Gulf of America,’ US enters name wars

As Trump declares ‘Gulf of America,’ US enters name wars
  • “In claiming the right to force others to use the name of his choosing, Trump is asserting a sort of sovereignty over an international body of water,” Gerry Kearns, a professor of geography at Maynooth University in Ireland

WASHINGTON: For years, as disputes over names on the map riled up nationalist passions in several parts of the world, US policymakers have watched warily, trying to stay out or to quietly encourage peace.
Suddenly, the United States has gone from a reluctant arbiter to a nomenclature belligerent, as President Donald Trump declared that the Gulf of Mexico will henceforth be called the “Gulf of America.”
In an executive order signed hours after he returned to the White House, Trump called the water body an “indelible part of America” critical to US oil production and fishing and “a favorite destination for American tourism and recreation activities.”
The term Gulf of America was soon used by the US Coast Guard in a press release on enforcing Trump’s new crackdown on migrants, as well as Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, when discussing a winter storm.
Deep-sea ecologist Andrew Thaler said Trump’s declaration was “very silly” and would likely be ignored by maritime professionals.
A president has the authority to rename sites within the United States — as Trump also did.
“The Gulf of Mexico, however, is a body of water that borders several countries and includes pockets of high seas,” said Thaler, founder of Blackbeard Biologic Science and Environmental Advisers.
“There really isn’t any precedent for a US president renaming international geologic and oceanographic features. Any attempt to rename the entire Gulf of Mexico would be entirely symbolic,” he said.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has cheekily suggested calling the United States “Mexican America,” pointing to a map from well before Washington seized one-third of her country in 1848.
“For us it is still the Gulf of Mexico and for the entire world it is still the Gulf of Mexico,” she said Tuesday.
The International Hydrographic Organization, set up a century ago, works to survey the world’s seas and oceans and is the closest to an authority on harmonizing names for international waters.
The United Nations also has an expert group on geographical names, which opens its next meeting on April 28.
Martin H. Levinson, president emeritus of the Institute of General Semantics, said it was unknown how much political capital Trump would invest in seeking name recognition by other countries.
“Does he really want to strong-arm them for something as minor as this?” Levinson asked.
“I think the political benefit is to the domestic audience that he’s playing to — saying we’re patriotic, this is our country, we’re not going to let the name be subsumed by other countries,” he said.
He doubted that other countries would change the name but said it was possible Google Earth — a more ready reference to laypeople — could list an alternative name, as it has in other disputes.

Among the most heated disputes, South Korea has long resented calling the body of water to its east the Sea of Japan and has advocated for it to be called the East Sea.
The United States, an ally of both countries, has kept Sea of Japan but Korean-Americans have pushed at the local level for school textbooks to say East Sea.
In the Middle East, Trump in his last term angered Iranians by publicly using the term Arabian Gulf for the oil-rich water body historically known as the Arabian Gulf but which Arab nationalists have sought to rename.
The United States has also advocated maintaining a 2018 deal where Greece agreed for its northern neighbor to change its name to North Macedonia from Macedonia, but Athens ulitmately rejected due to historical associations with Alexander the Great.
Gerry Kearns, a professor of geography at Maynooth University in Ireland, said that Trump’s move was part of the “geopolitics of spectacle” but also showed his ideological bent.
With Trump also threatening to take the Panama Canal and Greenland, Trump is seeking to project a new type of Monroe Doctrine, the 1823 declaration by the United States that it would dominate the Western Hemisphere, Kearns said.
“Names work because they are shared; we know we are talking about the same thing,” he wrote in an essay.
“In claiming the right to force others to use the name of his choosing, Trump is asserting a sort of sovereignty over an international body of water.”
 


Trumps’ top diplomat Rubio affirms ‘ironclad’ US commitment to Philippines amid China threat

Trumps’ top diplomat Rubio affirms ‘ironclad’ US commitment to Philippines amid China threat
Updated 23 January 2025
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Trumps’ top diplomat Rubio affirms ‘ironclad’ US commitment to Philippines amid China threat

Trumps’ top diplomat Rubio affirms ‘ironclad’ US commitment to Philippines amid China threat
  • Marco Rubio discussed China's “dangerous and destabilizing actions in the South China Sea” in a call with his Philippine counterpart, says State Department spokeswoman

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday the United States under President Donald Trump remained committed to the Philippines’ defense, as tensions simmer with Beijing in the South China Sea.
In a call with his Philippine counterpart Enrique Manalo, Rubio “underscored the United States’ ironclad commitments to the Philippines under our Mutual Defense Treaty,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said.

The Philippines has been embroiled in wrangles at sea with China in the past two years and the two countries have faced off regularly around disputed features in the South China Sea that fall inside Manila’s exclusive economic zone.

China claims most of the strategic waterway despite an international tribunal ruling that its claim lacked any legal basis.

Rubio’s call followed his hosting of counterparts from Australia, India and Japan in the China-focused “Quad” forum on Tuesday, the day after President Donald Trump returned to the White House. The four recommitted to working together.
Quad members and the Philippines share concerns about China’s growing power and analysts said Tuesday’s meeting was designed to signal continuity in the Indo-Pacific and that countering Beijing will be a top priority for Trump.
In the call with Manalo, Rubio “underscored the United States’ ironclad commitments to the Philippines” under their Mutual Defense Treaty and discussed ways to advance security cooperation, expand economic ties and deepen regional cooperation, the statement said.
Just ahead of Trump’s swearing-in, the Philippines and the United States carried out their fifth set of joint maritime exercises in the South China Sea since launching the joint activities in 2023.
Security engagements between the allies have soared under Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who has pivoted closer to Washington and allowed the expansion of military bases that American forces can access, including facilities facing the Chinese-claimed but democratically-governed island of Taiwan.
Visiting the Philippines last week, Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya said a trilateral initiative to boost cooperation launched by Japan, the US and the Philippines at a summit last year would be strengthened when the new US administration took over in Washington.


New explosive wildfire erupts near Los Angeles

New explosive wildfire erupts near Los Angeles
Updated 23 January 2025
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New explosive wildfire erupts near Los Angeles

New explosive wildfire erupts near Los Angeles
  • Meteorologists say strong winds and low humidity create conditions ripe for rapid fire spread

CASTAIC, United States: A new wildfire erupted north of Los Angeles on Wednesday, exploding in size and sparking orders for tens of thousands of people to evacuate in a region already staggering from the effects of huge blazes.
Ferocious flames were devouring hillsides near Castaic Lake, spreading rapidly to cover more than 5,000 acres (2,000 hectares) in just a few hours.
The fire was being fanned by strong, dry Santa Ana winds that were racing through the area, pushing a vast pall of smoke and dangerous embers ahead of the flames.
Evacuations were ordered for 31,000 people around the lake, which sits around 35 miles (56 kilometers) north of Los Angeles, and close to the city of Santa Clarita.
“I’m just praying that our house doesn’t burn down,” one man told broadcaster KTLA as he packed his car.
The fire came with the greater Los Angeles area still suffering after two enormous fires that killed more than two dozen people and destroyed thousands of structures.
Robert Jensen, of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, urged everyone in the impacted area of the new blaze — dubbed the Hughes Fire — to leave immediately.
“We’ve seen the devastation caused by people failing to follow those orders in the Palisades and Eaton fires,” he said.
“I don’t want to see that here in our community as well. If you’ve been issued an evacuation order, please get out.”
Television footage showed police driving around neighborhoods urging people to leave.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic was under an evacuation order, and around 500 inmates were being moved to a neighboring facility.
He told broadcaster KCAL9 that around 4,600 inmates being held at other jails in the area were sheltering in place, but buses were on hand in case conditions changed and they needed to be moved.
Melissa Camacho, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, noted the rights group’s opposition to “the expansion of the jail system especially in dangerous fire zones,” adding that “we are gravely concerned for the safety of people incarcerated in those jails.”
California Highway Patrol said the fire was impacting traffic on the I5 freeway, with a section of the road — which runs the length of the US West Coast — shuttered.
Helicopters and planes were on the scene dropping water and retardant on the blaze.
That fleet included two Super Scoopers, enormous amphibious planes that can carry hundreds of gallons (liters) of water.
Crews from Los Angeles County Fire Department and Angeles National Forest were also attacking the blaze from the ground.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has been the target of criticism by President Donald Trump over his handling of the Los Angeles fires, said he had ordered officials into action.
“State resources have been deployed to the Hughes Fire in the Angeles National Forest to assist in the federal response,” he said.
“We will continue to monitor the situation closely and provide the federal government with whatever it needs to extinguish this fire.”
It was not immediately clear what sparked the fire, but it occurred during red flag fire conditions — when meteorologists say strong winds and low humidity create conditions ripe for rapid fire spread.
Human activity, including the unchecked burning of fossil fuels, is changing Earth’s climate, increasing average global temperatures and altering weather patterns.
Even though January is the middle of the region’s rainy season, Southern California has not seen any significant precipitation in around eight months, leaving the countryside tinder dry.