الكاتب: kafej

Media barred from reporting on election body’s actions at military bases or areas under martial law without clearance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved changes to a law that will curtail media coverage of next year’s presidential election, according to local news agencies.

The elections are due to be held in March. The 71-year-old president, who has led the country for 24 years, is expected to stand for another six-year term. Putin has not officially declared he will run, saying he will announce that only after parliament formally sets the election date.

The changes Putin greenlighted limit coverage of Central Election Commission sessions to registered media outlets, which could exclude freelancers or independent journalists, according to the reports on Tuesday.

The amendments prohibit media from reporting on the commission’s actions at military bases or in areas under martial law without advance clearance from regional and military authorities.

They also bar the publication of any campaign content on “blocked sources”, referring to restricted websites and social media services.

Under an intensifying crackdown on the opposition and the flow of information, Russia has banned an array of websites and services, including Facebook and Instagram.

To enforce this ban, the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media also reportedly plans to block certain virtual private networks (VPNs) that Russians widely use to bypass internet restrictions.

The state-owned news agency RIA quoted the ministry on Sunday as saying that it could block certain “VPN services and VPN protocols” that an expert commission identifies as a “threat.”

Intensifying crackdown

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it has clamped down on independent and dissenting media voices, watchdogs have said.

Hundreds of journalists have gone into exile as state censors have closed many respected independent media outlets and launched criminal cases against prominent journalists and regional bloggers.

“After Russian tanks entered Ukraine, the authorities switched to a scorched-earth strategy that has turned Russia’s media landscape into a wasteland,” Amnesty International’s director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Marie Struthers, said in March 2022.

Russian polling agencies have found that Putin’s approval rating remains high – even as much as 82 percent in October. He appears easily poised to win if he runs for re-election.

Last week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “I have no doubt that if he puts forward his candidacy, he will win confidently.”

Washington, DC – Jeers erupted at a pro-Israel rally in Washington, DC, when political analyst Van Jones called for the bombing of Gaza to stop.

Jones had condemned anti-Semitism and voiced support for Israel in his remarks to the March for Israel, a demonstration that brought tens of thousands of protesters on Tuesday to the National Mall, a park in the heart of the United States capital.

But it was Jones’s proclamation that he was a “peace guy” that drew rumbles from the crowd.

“I pray for peace — no more rockets from Gaza and no more bombs falling down on the people of Gaza. God, protect the children,” he said.

The initial boos against him quickly turned into chants of “no ceasefire”. The crowd had gathered to back Israel’s war in Gaza and to call for the release of more than 200 captives held by the Palestinian group Hamas.

On October 7, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing more than 1,200 people. In response, Israel has led a military offensive against Gaza, a small, densely-packed Palestinian strip that is home to 2.3 million people. Israeli attacks have killed more than 11,000 Palestinians.

Tuesday’s demonstration follows a major protest by Palestinian rights advocates in Washington, DC, 10 days earlier.

But this march drew top members of the US Congress from both major parties, including the Speaker of the House of Representative Mike Johnson and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, both of whom addressed the crowd.

“The calls for a ceasefire are outrageous,” Johnson said. His statement was met with more chants of “no ceasefire”, this time approvingly.

Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke at the rally as well. So did John Hagee, a right-wing Christian pastor who has been accused of stoking both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

Hagee came under fire in 2008 after an old sermon resurfaced in which he described Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as a “hunter” sent by God to push Jewish people to move to Israel.

The administration of President Joe Biden was also represented at the rally by Deborah Lipstadt, the US envoy to combat anti-Semitism.

The broad ideological spectrum at the protest highlighted the US’s bipartisan support for Israel.

“Bring them home,” the protesters chanted, referring to the captives in Gaza, as they waved Israeli and American flags.

Leading rights groups have accused Israel of violating international law during the war and attacking civilian targets, including residential neighbourhoods, hospitals and schools housing displaced people. United Nations experts have also warned of the risk of genocide against the Palestinian people.

When asked about the casualties in Gaza, many demonstrators expressed sympathy for Palestinians, but they blamed Hamas for the violence, accusing the group of using civilians as “human shields”.

Many held signs proclaiming Israel’s boundary from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. The messages aimed to counter the slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — something Palestinian rights supporters consider an aspirational call for freedom and equality.

Al Jazeera spoke to some of the protesters at Tuesday’s event. Here’s what they had to say:

Stu Weiss: ‘What occupation?’

Stu Weiss, a protester from New Jersey, held a sign saying that the 1,200 Israelis killed on October 7 would amount to 48,000 Americans relative to the size of the population.

Weiss said his message aims to make people think about the scale of the atrocities committed by Hamas. He added that Hamas is also responsible for the Palestinian deaths in Gaza, claiming that the group prevented people from fleeing south.

In reality, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced from the north of Gaza, and Israel has continued to bomb southern towns where it told residents to go. An estimated one out of every 200 Palestinians in Gaza has died.

Weiss said that, by the end of the conflict, he would like to see “Hamas gone and Israelis living in peace with the Palestinian people”.

“They’re taught to hate Jews and Israel,” he said of Palestinians. Asked whether Israel’s occupation of Gaza contributed to hostility in the conflict, Weiss responded, “What occupation?”

James McLaughlin: ‘They’re coming for us next’

James McLaughlin, a demonstrator from Philadelphia, said there can never be a ceasefire until Israel destroys Hamas.

“They’re coming for the Jews. And they’re coming for us next — all of Western civilisation. So as a bulwark, Western civilisation is the bedrock of my faith. I totally stand with Israel,” McLaughlin told Al Jazeera.

He displayed a sign that read, “Christians stand with Israel.”

Rima: ‘Israel is our land’

Rima, a protester who chose to identify by her first name only, carried a large green placard saying, “From the river to the sea, Israel is all you’ll see.”

“Israel is our indigenous land, and it’s always going to be ours. This is where Jews come from. They were there before Arabs. They were there before anyone else,” Rima told Al Jazeera.

Evan: ‘Hard to imagine a good outcome’

Evan, a demonstrator who also wanted to be identified by his first name only, waved a large Israeli flag and stressed that Hamas started the war.

He voiced support for what he called Israel’s “right to defend itself”. Still, he expressed a grim outlook for the future as he reflected on what would happen after the current conflict.

“It’s hard to imagine a good outcome, no matter what. Israel has probably created another generation of people who will hate them. And that’s a consequence of war. Anyone who’s lost a parent, a child, a loved one, a cousin — killed in a thing — cannot be expected to embrace or forgive,” Evan said.

“It’s unfortunate. But I can’t sit here and say to Israel, ‘You have to get out now.’”

Minna Shezaf: Conflict is ‘terrifying’

Minna Shezaf, a demonstrator from Washington, DC, who has lived in Israel, said she was at the rally to express solidarity with Israel and praised Biden’s handling of the crisis as “admirable”.

Shezaf added that the conflict could take a “terrifying” turn if the armed group Hezbollah gets further involved in the war.

The Lebanese group has been launching attacks on Israeli troops almost daily in support of Gaza. Israel, in turn, has been retaliating by bombing areas across its shared border with Lebanon.

Asked about the mounting death toll in Gaza, Shezaf said, “It’s terrible what Hamas is doing to the people of Gaza. It’s a human rights violation.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping has arrived in the United States for his first visit in six years, after US President Joe Biden said his goal in their bilateral talks this week was to restore normal communications with Beijing, including military-to-military contacts.

Xi is due to meet Biden near San Francisco on Wednesday morning US time, before attending the annual summit of the 21-member Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grouping.

The summit will be their first face-to-face meeting in a year and follows months of high-level meetings to prepare the ground, after tensions between the two countries spiked over issues from trade to human rights and the pandemic.

Speaking ahead of his departure, Biden said his goal was simply to improve the bilateral relationship.

“We’re not trying to decouple from China. What we’re trying to do is change the relationship for the better,” Biden told reporters at the White House before heading to San Francisco.

Asked what he hoped to achieve at the meeting, he said he wanted “to get back on a normal course of corresponding; being able to pick up the phone and talk to one another if there’s a crisis; being able to make sure our [militaries] still have contact with one another”.

Xi waved from the door of his Air China plane before walking down the steps to meet US officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, who were waiting on the tarmac.

He is on his first visit to US since 2017 when he met then president Donald Trump.

China, which regularly talks about “red lines” on issues such as the self-ruled island Taiwan, which it claims as its own and its expansive claims in the South China Sea, has been more circumspect about its expectations for the summit.

A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry mentioned only “in-depth communication” and “major issues concerning world peace” when asked about the meeting this week.

Nevertheless, analysts said the very fact the talks were taking place was significant.

“The importance of the much-expected meeting between President Biden and President Xi in San Francisco cannot be understated, no matter the likely shallowness of the outcomes,” Alicia Garcia Herrero of investment banking group Natixis wrote in an analysis ahead of the summit.

Protests expected

Crowds gathered along the route of Xi’s motorcade to the luxury hotel where the Chinese delegation is staying.

Some held signs that read “End CCP,” the initials of Chinese Communist Party. Another sign read “Warmly Welcome President Xi Jinping” and was stuck to concrete bollards.

Outside the hotel, several hundred Beijing supporters waved US and Chinese flags as they waited and played the patriotic song Ode to the Motherland through loudspeakers

Scuffles broke out with the few anti-Xi protesters who were there, but police quickly intervened to restore calm.

Pro-China and anti-China demonstrators also gathered near the Moscone Center, the venue where many of the APEC meetings were being held. Larger protests, including by rights groups critical of Xi’s policies in Tibet, Hong Kong and towards Muslim Uyghurs, are expected near the summit venue on Wednesday.

Xi and Biden are expected to meet at Filoli Estate, a country house museum about 40km (25 miles) south of San Francisco, the Associated Press news agency reported, citing three senior officials in the US administration who requested anonymity. The venue has not yet been confirmed by the White House and Chinese government.

While economic issues are likely to be high on the agenda of the meeting, including steps to curb the production of the potent synthetic opioid drug fentanyl, increasing geopolitical tensions are likely to dominate discussions.

White House National Security Spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that Biden and Xi would talk about the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza as well as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

While Washington has sought to reset ties with China, it has also signalled that will not be at the expense of key US concerns.

Biden is “not going to be afraid to – to confront where confrontation is needed on issues where we don’t see eye to eye with President Xi and the PRC,” Kirby said, using the initials for the People’s Republic of China.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told APEC ministers that the US believed in “a region where economies are free to choose their own path … where goods, ideas, people flow lawfully and freely”.

Blinken did not mention China by name, but his language echoed US rhetoric in recent years in which Washington has accused China of bullying smaller countries in the Asia Pacific and trying to undermine what the US and its allies call the “rules-based” international order.

Israel has launched an overnight raid on Gaza’s largest medical facility – al Shifa hospital – hours after the US backed claims it was being used by Hamas fighters.

Israeli forces said they entered a “specified area” of the medical complex for a “precise and targeted” operation “against Hamas“.

The raid came hours after the US backed Israel’s claims that the medical facility had been used by Hamas as a base of operations.

Hamas – which flatly denied the claims – blamed US President Joe Biden and his administration for the Israeli raid, saying that the “adopting” of the allegations had effectively given Israel the “green light” to launch the operation.

However, in a statement, the White House said it did not support air strikes on the hospital and that it “did not want to see” a firefight inside the facility.

The White House also urged that patients “must be protected” during the raid.

Israel-Gaza latest: Israeli forces enter al Shifa hospital in ‘targeted operation’

While thousands have fled the hospital since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas conflict, around 650 patients and 500 staff – along with around 2,500 displaced Palestinians – are thought to still be in al Shifa, according to UN estimates.

Israel Defence Forces (IDF) spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, said their intelligence put the number of people still inside the facility at around 1,000.

However, he told CNN that Israeli forces were “not overrunning the hospital” and instead were carrying out a targeted operation in a “specific location” of the al Shifa medical complex.

He did not give further details of the “complex” operation, but said it was a “military necessity” based on Israeli and US intelligence.

He also said IDF forces would “perhaps” rescue some of the estimated 240 hostages who were taken into Gaza during Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October.

Israel has repeatedly claimed that al Shifa – a large medical complex in Gaza City – along with other hospitals, have been used as bases by Hamas.

It has previously threatened to target al Shifa and has warned about the potential for the facility to lose its protection under international humanitarian law if used to hide fighters or store weapons.

On Monday, President Biden said that the hospital “must be protected” and said it was his “expectation” that there would be “less intrusive action”.

However, on Tuesday, the White House’s national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, said the US had its own intelligence that showed Hamas were operating out of al Shifa.

Hamas responded to “strongly condemn and reject the claims”. However, hours later, the IDF announced it had launched its “targeted operation” at the hospital.

Read more from Sky News:
Gaza surgeon gives harrowing account of child amputation
Palestinians stream onto Gaza highway as Israeli forces strike near hospitals
What protection do hospitals have in wartime?

In a statement announcing the raid, the IDF said it had “publicly warned time and again that Hamas’ continued military use of the hospital jeopardised its protected status under international law”.

“Yesterday [Monday], the IDF conveyed to the relevant authorities in Gaza once again that all military activities within the hospital must cease within 12 hours,” the Israeli military said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, they did not.”

The IDF urged any Hamas fighters in the hospital to surrender immediately.

In response, Hamas said it held Israel, President Biden, and his administration, “fully responsible for the repercussions of the occupation army’s storming of the Shifa Medical Complex, and what the medical staff and thousands of displaced people are exposed to, as a result of this brutal crime against a health facility protected by international law”.

The raid came amid claims of a humanitarian crisis at the hospital, which has been encircled by Israeli troops.

Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry said 32 patients, including three babies, had died since the hospital’s emergency generator ran out of fuel on Saturday.

On Monday, the ministry released images of about a dozen premature babies wrapped in blankets together on a bed to keep them warm.

Israel’s military said it was working to bring incubators into Gaza and on Tuesday shared an image showing a soldier unloading incubators from a van.

The military did not make it clear if the incubators had been delivered or how they would be powered.

According to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, at least 11,255 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its retaliatory strikes after the 7 October attack.

The latest test in contravention of UN sanctions is part of Pyongyang’s ongoing effort to modernise its weaponry.

North Korea has successfully conducted static tests of a new solid-fuel engine for its banned intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBM), according to state media.

The country “has developed new-type high-thrust solid-fuel engines for intermediate ballistic missiles again, which are of important strategic significance,” the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Wednesday.

“The test provided a sure guarantee for reliably accelerating the development of the new-type IRBM system,” KCNA said, adding that the tests took place on November 11 and 14.

Military analysts say solid-fuel missiles are easier and safer to operate, and require less logistical support, making them harder to detect than liquid-fuel weapons.

North Korea has carried out a slew of weapons tests in recent years, including its first solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and a “new type” of submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), as leader Kim Jong Un steps up his efforts to modernise the country’s military. The country is banned from carrying out ballistic missile tests under UN sanctions.

North Korea’s General Missile Bureau said the recent tests were essential for enhancing the strategic offensive capabilities of the military in light of “the grave and unstable security environment facing the country” and the “vicious” collusion of its enemies, KCNA said.

The announcement came as a Russian delegation led by Moscow’s natural resources minister Alexander Kozlov was in Pyongyang to hold talks on issues from trade to economy, science and technology.

The two countries’ growing military cooperation has been a source of concern, with United Nations’s member states enforcing the Korean War armistice saying this week they were concerned that Russia and China were helping North Korea expand its military capabilities by enabling Pyongyang to evade UN sanctions.

The United States has also said North Korea is sending weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine and that Moscow is providing Pyongyang with technical military support.

North Korea is also trying to put a military spy satellite into orbit – an effort at which it has already failed twice – and South Korea has said Moscow is providing it with the space technology to help.

North Korea and Russia have denied any arms deals, although they have promised to deepen military cooperation.

Kim Jong Un travelled to eastern Russia in September where he held a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Vostochny Cosmodrome and later toured weapons factories as well as the naval base in Vladivostok.