الكاتب: kafej

KMT and TPP were due to announce which candidate would run for president on Saturday.

A coalition between Taiwan’s rival opposition parties has hit a roadblock after party leaders were unable to agree on who will run for president in next year’s election.

The Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) said on Saturday they were unable to agree on the statistical method for looking at polling that would have determined which candidate would run as president and which would run as vice president.

The parties had been due to release the poll results on Saturday morning after earlier in the week agreeing to form a joint ticket.

A TPP spokesperson said its candidate Ko Wen-je had tied with the KMT candidate Hou Yu-ih, while the KMT said Hou won in a landslide.

Also at issue was how to count phone calls, with the KMT refusing to accept the results from cell phones, according to the TPP.

The rift comes just days after the two parties agreed to work together in a surprise deal brokered by former President Ma Ying-jeou.

The deal had been seen as helping to unite the fractured opposition vote against the ruling Democratic Progressive Party in the January 13 election.

Both candidates were polling behind the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s William Lai, the incumbent vice president. Terry Gou, the billionaire founder of Apple supplier Foxconn, has been running in a distant fourth place.

The KMT and the TPP said on Saturday they would continue to work together for now, although it is unclear when the ballot will be decided.

Ko told reporters that he still thought it was “necessary to join the forces of the opposition” and find the best pairing of candidates.

Ko and Hou are former mayors of Taipei City and greater New Taipei City, two of Taiwan’s largest metropolitan areas.

The TPP has enjoyed support among younger voters eager to shake up Taiwan’s two-party dominated politics, while the KMT is typically supported by older voters or those with business ties to China.

Both parties have pitched themselves as more China-friendly than the ruling DPP, which has invoked Beijing’s ire by seeking to raise Taiwan’s profile on the international stage and build up its military.

Justice Ministry files lawsuit in Supreme Court to ban ‘movement’ in most drastic step against the community so far.

Russian authorities have filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court to outlaw the LGBTQ “international public movement”, in the latest crackdown against the country’s beleaguered community.

The Ministry of Justice said it had “lodged an administrative legal claim” aimed at recognising the LGBTQ movement “as extremist and banning its activity in Russia”.

The move is by far the most drastic step in the decade-long crackdown on LGBTQ rights in Russia unleashed under President Vladimir Putin, who has put “traditional family values” at the cornerstone of his rule.

The ministry did not specify whether it was seeking the closure of any specific groups or organisations, or if the designation would apply more broadly to the LGBTQ community, causes and individuals.

In a statement, it also accused the “LGBT movement operating on the territory of the Russian Federation” of “various signs and manifestations of extremism, including incitement to social and religious hatred”.

A court hearing is scheduled for November 30, the ministry said.

“Russian authorities are once again forgetting that the LGBT+ community are human beings,” said Dilya Gafurova, who heads the Sphere human rights group from exile.

Authorities “don’t just want to erase us from the public field: they want to ban us as a social group,” Gafurova added.

Crackdown intensified after invasion of Ukraine

Moscow’s crackdown against liberal-leaning groups has intensified since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, which has seen the LBGTQ community in the country face increasing curtailment of their rights.

The Kremlin has since ramped up its rhetoric about protecting “traditional values” from what it called the West’s “degrading” influence.

Russia has used the “extremist” label against swaths of rights organisations and opposition groups, opening up their members to criminal prosecution.

In July, lawmakers banned medical intervention and administrative procedures outlawing gender reassignment.

Lawmaker Pyotr Tolstoy said at the time that the measure was about “erecting a barrier to the penetration of Western anti-family ideology”.

Last November, lawmakers also approved a bill banning all forms of LGBTQ “propaganda”, a move with far-reaching consequences for book publishing and film distribution.

Russia has for years been an inhospitable environment for anyone whose views differ from the hardline interpretation of “traditional values” promoted by the Kremlin and the Orthodox church.

The country passed a notorious ban on so-called “gay propaganda” in 2013. Same-sex marriage was also effectively outlawed in 2020 by a constitutional amendment stipulating marriage is a union between a man and a woman.

Out of 49 European countries, the Rainbow Europe organisation ranked Russia third from bottom in terms of tolerance of LGBTQ people.

More than 20 patients have died at Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital in the last two days as Israeli forces continue to raid the facility, according to a hospital official and the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza.

The health ministry said on Friday that 24 patients died over the past 48 hours due to power cuts at the hospital, which has been out of service since Saturday amid a fuel shortage.

“Twenty-four patients in different departments have died over the last 48 hours as vital medical equipment has stopped functioning because of the power outage,” said health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra on Friday.

Muhammad Abu Salmiya, director of al-Shifa Hospital, told Al Jazeera that 22 patients had died overnight.

The health facility has become the focus of Israel’s ground offensive in northern Gaza, with special forces combing through the facility since Wednesday amid growing international alarm about the fate of the hundreds of patients and thousands of civilians seeking shelter there.

Israel has alleged that Hamas fighters are using a tunnel complex beneath the hospital to stage attacks. Hamas and hospital officials have repeatedly denied the claims.

Israel said its forces had found a vehicle with a large number of weapons, and an underground structure it called a Hamas tunnel shaft, after two days searching the premises.

The army also said it had found the bodies of two hostages in buildings near, though not inside, the hospital grounds.

The Palestinian health ministry said the raid has destroyed medical services in the hospital, where the UN estimated 2,300 patients, staff and displaced Palestinians were sheltering before Israeli troops moved in.

Al-Shifa staff said a premature baby died at the hospital on Friday, the first baby to die there in the two days since Israeli forces entered.

Three had died in the previous days while the hospital was surrounded by Israeli forces.

Muhammad Abu Salmiya, director of al-Shifa Hospital, told Al Jazeera that the medical compound has become a “big prison” and a “mass grave” for all those inside.

“We are left with nothing – no power, no food, no water. With every passing minute, we are losing a life. Overnight, we lost 22 persons, [and] for the past three days, the hospital has been kept under siege,” Salmiya said.

Dire lack of fuel

Israel imposed a strict blockade and launched a military assault on Gaza last month after Hamas carried out an attack on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, and taking about 240 others hostage, according to Israeli officials.

The Israeli air and ground assault has killed more than 12,000 people, including 5,000 children, according to Palestinian authorities in Gaza.

Now in its seventh week, the Israeli siege has severely restricted supplies of food, water, electricity and fuel to the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip, with aid agencies warning of a humanitarian crisis in the territory.

Israel has said it has agreed to a US request to allow two fuel trucks a day into Gaza, following a UN warning that the shortages had halted aid deliveries and put people at risk of starvation. The amount is about half of what the UN said it needs to conduct lifesaving functions for hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza, including fuelling water systems, hospitals, bakeries and its trucks delivering aid.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said earlier that its aid trucks were unable to enter Gaza from Egypt for a second straight day on Friday due to the lack of fuel and a near-total communications blackout that began on Thursday.

UNRWA said it would be unable to “manage or coordinate humanitarian convoys” because of the telecommunications outage.

Near total collapse

More than half of Gaza’s hospitals are no longer functional due to combat, damage or shortages, and Israel’s raid on al-Shifa left extensive damage to the radiology, burns and dialysis units, Hamas said.

Conditions for Palestinian civilians are rapidly deteriorating, the UN warned.

More than 1.5 million people have been internally displaced, and Israel’s blockade of the territory means “civilians are facing the immediate possibility of starvation”, World Food Programme head Cindy McCain said.

UNRWA said 70 percent of people have no access to clean water in south Gaza, where raw sewage had started to flow on the streets.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini described children sheltering at a UN school “pleading for a sip of water, or for a loaf of bread”.

After more than a month of Israel’s relentless bombing and at the fifth time of asking, the United Nations Security Council has called for humanitarian pauses plus the release of captives held by Hamas.

Three permanent veto-holding members – the United States, United Kingdom and Russia – abstained from voting.

Israel dismissed the resolution as meaningless and continued its bombardment and ground assault on the besieged territory.

So, can the UN Security Council stop Israel’s bombing of Gaza?

Presenter: James Bays

Guests:

Richard Gowan – UN director, International Crisis Group

Yara Hawari – Senior analyst of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network

Adama Dieng – Former UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide

 

The United Nations was forced to stop deliveries of food and other necessities to Gaza and warned of the growing possibility of widespread starvation after internet and telephone services collapsed in the besieged enclave because of a lack of fuel.

Israel’s national security adviser says the country’s War Cabinet has agreed to allow two tanker trucks of fuel to enter the Gaza Strip each day, a quantity he described as “very minimal.” The shipments appeared to be far less than what the UN has said is needed.

The communications blackout was in its second day on Friday. It has largely cut off Gaza’s 2.3 million people from one another and the outside world, and halted the coordination of aid, which humanitarian groups were already struggling to deliver because of the fuel shortage.