الكاتب: kafej

Wayne’s World star Dana Carvey has announced the death of his “extremely talented” son from an accidental overdose at the age of 32.

The US comedian and actor said he and his wife Paula Zwagerman had suffered a “terrible tragedy” on Wednesday evening following the death of their “beloved son” Dex.

“Dex packed a lot into those 32 years,” the 68-yeqar-old said in a statement on Instagram.

“He was extremely talented at so many things – music, art, film making, comedy – and pursued all of them passionately.

“It’s not an exaggeration to say that Dex loved life. And when you were with him, you loved life too. He made everything fun.

“But most of all, he loved his family, his friends and his girlfriend, Kaylee.

“Dex was a beautiful person. His handmade birthday cards are a treasure. We will miss him forever.”

Carvey, who won an Emmy award in 1993 for outstanding individual performance in US comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live, said to those struggling with addiction or those who have loved ones struggling with addiction “you are in our hearts and prayers”.

Dex starred in a number of TV series alongside his father, including The Funster in 2013, Beyond The Comics a year later and Carpool Pandering in 2016.

UK’s Tyson Fury will fight Ukraine’s Oleksandr Usyk in Riyadh in the first undisputed heavyweight title fight since 1999.

Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk will fight for the undisputed heavyweight championship of the world in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on February 17, organisers have announced.

Fury, 35 – a British citizen of Irish Traveller heritage – is the World Boxing Council (WBC) world champion, while Ukrainian Usyk, 36, holds the World Boxing Association (WBA), World Boxing Organization (WBO), International Boxing Federation (IBF) and International Boxing Organization (IBO) belts. Both have unbeaten records.

Contracts were signed in September for a proposed December 23 date, although that was never confirmed and slid after Fury’s near defeat to former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) champion Francis Ngannou in a non-title bout in Saudi Arabia on October 28.

Fury was left with a swollen eye and cut on the forehead after the split-decision win over Ngannou.

Britain’s Lennox Lewis was the last undisputed heavyweight champion in 1999 when he defeated Evander Holyfield to win the WBA, WBC, and IBF titles.

Fury will look to add to his record of 34 wins with one draw since turning professional in 2008, while Usyk has won all of his 21 professional fights.

Saudi Arabia has staged several leading boxing events in recent years, including Usyk’s win over Anthony Joshua in 2022.

Top US diplomat makes plea amid surge in reports of settler violence since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken has urged Israel to take “urgent” steps to stop violence being carried out by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

The top US diplomat made the call in a telephone call with Benny Gantz, a centrist opposition leader who joined Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wartime cabinet after Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel.

Blinken “stressed the urgent need for affirmative steps to de-escalate tensions in the West Bank, including by confronting rising levels of settler extremist violence,” the State Department said in a statement on Thursday.

Blinken also discussed efforts to “augment and accelerate” the delivery of humanitarian assistance into Gaza, secure the release of captives held by Hamas, and prevent the war from widening into a broader conflict, the State Department said.

Israeli settler violence has increased significantly since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, rising from an average of three incidents to seven per day, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OHCA).

Blinken’s comments came as Israeli forces carried out fresh raids in the occupied West Bank and continued military operations in and around several of Gaza’s major hospitals, which have been forced to suspend operations due to Israeli bombardment and dwindling fuel and medical supplies.

Palestinian news agency Wafa reported on Thursday that Israeli forces stormed the northern city of Jenin, deploying snipers and more than 80 military vehicles and bulldozers in the vicinity of its refugee camp.

In a post on Telegram, the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, said it was fighting “alongside all the other resistance groups in the camp” and targeting the Israeli army “with heavy fire and explosive devices”.

Several villages surrounding Jenin, including Jalboun, Beit Qad, Faqqua, and Deir Abu Da’if, were also raided, according to Wafa.

In Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said Israel’s military had resumed attacks on the Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the enclave, hitting multiple residential houses.

“It’s important to mention that Jabalia refugee camp has seen multiple attacks by Israeli occupation forces and hundreds of civilians have been killed in this camp, which is considered to be the most densely populated inside the Gaza Strip,” Abu Azzoum said.

Residents in Jabalia have sought refuge at a United Nations shelter that is close to the Indonesian Hospital, where services have ground to a halt amid Israeli attacks, and staff and patients are running extremely low on food and water.

Israeli forces also continued to occupy the al-Shifa Hospital, the enclave’s biggest medical facility, where Israeli officials have claimed to have located weapons and other evidence proving the existence of a Hamas command centre. Hamas and doctors at the hospital have denied Israeli claims that the complex has been used to stage military operations.

“Patients are receiving medical treatment on the ground inside hospitals, and they don’t have enough food and water to survive. As well as the severe wounds they have, they also face hunger,” Abu Azzoum said.

“No humanitarian aid has been delivered to hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip, including at al-Shifa Hospital, which is occupied by Israeli soldiers,” he said.

As the war enters its 632nd day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Friday, November 17, 2023.

Fighting

• Russia stepped up attacks on the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka, near the Russian-held regional stronghold of Donetsk. Mayor Vitaliy Barabash told national television the situation was “very hot” and that the Russians were using armoured vehicles, targeting the industrial zone and hitting positions in the town “around the clock” in their attempts to seize it. Avdiivka had a population of about 30,000 people before the war, and just over 1,400 remain.
• Two people were killed and at least 12 injured in Russian attacks on different areas of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region. Regional Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said one of the dead was a 75-year-old woman who was killed when Russian forces on the eastern bank of the Dnipro river shelled Kherson, the region’s biggest town.
• Ukrainian officials said Russia launched 18 drones and an unspecified number of missiles with the air force destroying 16 of the drones and one missile. One person was hurt by falling debris in the western Khmelnytskyi region. Food warehouses were also damaged.
• Search and rescue teams in the eastern Ukrainian town of Selydove found the bodies of a married couple as they cleared rubble from Wednesday’s Russian missile attack in which two people had already been confirmed dead. The Prosecutor’s General Office said the couple had moved from another town in the Donetsk region because of the war.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the use of a fleet of naval drones had helped Kyiv “seize the initiative” from Russia in the Black Sea, forcing the Russian navy to limit its activities.
• Russia’s Defence Ministry said its missile defences had brought down three Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea near Crimea, and two more over the Bryansk region.
• A Russian court convicted Ukraine-based Russian far-right activist Denis Kapustin of state treason and terrorism for organising armed incursions into Russia’s Bryansk region, the state-run TASS news agency reported.

Politics and diplomacy

• The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab said in a report that at least 2,442 Ukrainian children had been transferred from Russia-occupied regions of Ukraine to 13 facilities in Belarus, where they have to participate in political and cultural re-education and military training. The report accused Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko of direct involvement in the children’s removal. The Yale lab is a partner of The Conflict Observatory, which is funded by the United States State Department.
• A St Petersburg court jailed Russian artist Alexandra Skochilenko for seven years after finding her guilty of spreading false information about the Russian military. Skochilenko was arrested after she replaced five supermarket price tags with messages calling for an end to Moscow’s war in Ukraine in March 2022.
• Newly-appointed British Foreign Secretary David Cameron made a surprise trip to Kyiv where he promised Ukraine the United Kingdom’s “moral, diplomatic and military support” for “however long it takes”. Cameron also travelled to the Black Sea port city of Odesa.
• Switzerland joined an international call to establish a special tribunal to address Russia’s crime of “aggression” against Ukraine. “Switzerland is firmly convinced that the aggression against Ukraine must not go unpunished,” the foreign minister said in a statement. The tribunal has support from 38 countries, including Canada, France, Guatemala and Japan.
• Finland said it would close four of its eight border crossings with Russia on Saturday after a surge in the number of people seeking asylum. Helsinki believes Moscow is encouraging people to go to the Finnish border, where they can apply for asylum, in an effort to destabilise the country. There has been a sharp increase in the number of undocumented people, mainly from Africa and the Middle East, crossing from Russia.
• The US imposed sanctions on three United Arab Emirates’ shipping firms and their vessels for transporting Russian oil sold above a $60 per barrel price cap agreed by the Group of Seven nations (G7) and Australia.
• The Kremlin said the Czech Republic’s decision to freeze Russian state-owned properties was illegal and warned it could retaliate against what it called a hostile step. The Czech government announced the freeze on Wednesday in an expansion of sanctions imposed over Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

Weapons

• Zelenskyy said deliveries of key artillery shells to Ukraine had dropped since the Israel-Hamas war began last month. “Our deliveries have decreased,” Zelenskyy told reporters, referring specifically to 155-millimetre shells that are widely used on the eastern and southern front lines in Ukraine, saying “they really slowed down” adding that “everyone is fighting for [stockpiles] themselves”.

Israeli forces have raided the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for the second consecutive day, following days of encircling the largest medical facility in Gaza.

They claim to have found what they call “grab bags” containing weapons and uniforms belonging to Hamas fighters.

But many observers have questioned what Israeli forces presented as evidence.

And there are fears that with the Israeli military in sole control of the operation, it could fabricate evidence to bolster its allegations.

Several experts have also argued that attacking hospitals – especially those treating critically ill patients and babies – could be a war crime as defined under international law.

Presenter: James Bays

Guests:

Erik Fosse – CEO of the Norwegian Aid Committee; has worked as a surgeon in Gaza during several wars since 1994

A Kayum Ahmed – special adviser on the right to health at Human Rights Watch

Thomas MacManus – Director of the International State Crime Initiative, Queen Mary University of London