الكاتب: kafej

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami says rescue teams working to free trapped workers ‘safely soon’.

Indian rescue workers have made contact with about 40 workers trapped in a tunnel collapse in Uttarakhand state and confirmed that all of them are safe, officials have said.

“All the 40 workers trapped inside the tunnel are safe,” Karamveer Singh Bhandari, a senior commander in the National Disaster Response Force, said in a statement on Monday. “We sent them water and food.”

The initial contact was made via a note on a scrap of paper, but later rescuers managed to connect using radio handsets.

The tunnel collapse occurred early on Sunday morning during a shift change at the construction site of the Yamunotri national highway.

Local media reported that nearly 200 metres (14.8 feet) of the tunnel, which will connect the Hindu shrines of Uttarkashi and Yamunotri, appeared to have caved in.

Photographs released by government rescue teams over the weekend showed huge piles of concrete blocking the tunnel, with twisted metal bars protruding in front of the rubble.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said authorities were working to remove concrete debris in order to get the workers free.

“Contact has been made with the workers trapped in the tunnel through a walkie-talkie,” he said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “Efforts are being made to get them out safely soon.”

Authorities began their rescue efforts on Sunday, pumping oxygen into the collapsed section of the tunnel to help workers breathe.

Accidents on large infrastructure projects are not uncommon in India.

In January, Indian authorities evacuated hundreds of people from their homes in Joshimath, also located in Uttarakhand state, after buildings in the area popular with pilgrims and tourists developed cracks.

Anti-coup forces say they shot down plane, but military says crash was result of a technical problem.

A fighter jet has crashed in eastern Myanmar amid increasing pressure from anti-coup forces on the generals who seized power in a coup in 2021.

The Sit-Tat jet crashed in Kayah State near the border with Thailand on Saturday with the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF) claiming it had shot down the plane.

However, military spokesperson Zaw Min Tun told state-run MRTV the aircraft came down because of a technical issue and that both pilots ejected safely. He said it had been on a training flight.

The crash comes with the military facing the most serious challenge from anti-coup forces since it seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.

An alliance of ethnic armed groups in northern Shan state launched an offensive two weeks ago that has captured a series of towns and dozens of military outposts near the border with China, emboldening groups in other parts of Myanmar to step up their campaigns against the generals.

About 50,000 people have been displaced in Shan State, and 40,000 in neighbouring Sagaing and Kachin states, according to the United Nations.

A statement posted on the KNDF’s Facebook page said fire from heavy machine guns hit the fighter in its fuselage and a wing before it crashed far from the battlefield leaving a trail of smoke.

The KNDF and the Karenni Army — the armed wing of the Karenni National Progressive Party — credited their members for bringing down the plane.

Mizzima, a Myanmar news outlet, posted images of what it said were the abandoned helmet and parachute of one of the pilots.

The KNDF is among dozens of groups that have been battling to restore democracy in Myanmar following the military’s removal of Aung San Suu Kyi’s government.

South Carolina lawmaker had been polling in sixth place among Republican contenders.

United States Senator Tim Scott has withdrawn from the 2024 Republican presidential race after failing to rise above low single digits in the polls.

Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, told Fox News on Sunday evening that he had suspended his campaign based on feedback from voters.

“I am suspending my campaign. I think the voters who are the most remarkable people on the planet have been really clear that they’re telling me: ‘Not now Tim,’” he said on the Sunday Night in America programme.

Scott also dismissed the possibility of joining any of his rivals’ campaigns as running mate, saying that “being vice president has never been on my to-do list for this campaign, and it’s certainly not there now.”

Scott, who entered the race in May, had been polling in sixth place among Republican primary candidates with only 2.5 percent of the vote, according to the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls.

The 58-year-old South Carolina lawmaker had pitched himself as a staunch conservative with an optimistic vision capable of healing the deep political divisions in the US.

Scott’s exit comes as a relatively crowded Republican field struggles to make a dent in the popularity of former President Donald Trump, who is polling far ahead of the competition despite facing four criminal indictments.

Scott is the second major candidate to leave the race in recent weeks. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who served under Trump, suspended his campaign late last month.

Scott on Sunday declined to immediately endorse any of his Republican rivals.

“I’m going to recommend that the voters study each candidate and their candidacies and frankly their past and make the best decision for the future of their country,” he said.

“The best way for me to be helpful is not weigh in on who they should endorse.”

More than 30 people have been trapped after an under-construction road tunnel collapsed in India.

The tunnel collapsed on Sunday after a landslide in India’s northern Himalayan state of Uttarakhand – a region popular with tourists.

All of those trapped were working on the tunnel, according to officials, who said they were pumping oxygen through a pipe into the collapsed section in order to help the workers breathe.

Food is also being sent to the trapped workers.

Manohar Tamta, an Uttarakhand state relief official, said it would take “some time to bring them out”.

However, the workers have sent out signals indicating that they are safe, according to the Press Trust of India news agency, citing a state government official.

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The collapsed portion of the tunnel is about 200m (500ft) from the entrance, according to police.

About 160 rescuers from federal and state disaster relief agencies are using drilling equipment and excavators to reach the workers.

Uttarakhand state is dotted with Hindu temples and sees a huge flow of pilgrims and tourists every year.

It has expanded over the years with the massive construction of buildings and roads.

A billionaire real estate tycoon in the United States is rallying support for a high-dollar media crusade to boost Israel’s image and demonise the Hamas armed group amid global pro-Palestinian solidarity protests.

The media campaign — called Facts for Peace — is seeking million-dollar donations from dozens of the world’s biggest names in media, finance and technology, according to an email seen by news website Semafor.

More than 50 individuals are being courted, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Dell CEO Michael Dell and financier Michael Milken. They have a combined net worth of around $500bn, Semafor said.

Some of the individuals, such as investor Bill Ackman, have publicly threatened to blacklist pro-Palestine students who are critical of Israel. On October 10, Ackman wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he and other business executives wanted Ivy League universities to disclose the names of students who are part of organisations that signed open letters criticising Israeli policies in Gaza.

‘Get ahead of the narrative’

US billionaire Barry Sternlicht, who started the project, said the campaign would help Israel “get ahead of the narrative” as the world has reacted to the intensive Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip.

“Public opinion will surely shift as scenes, real or fabricated by Hamas, of civilian Palestinian suffering will surely erode [Israel’s] current empathy in the world community”, Sternlicht wrote in an email soliciting contributions from the wealthy figures shortly after Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, according to Semafor. “We must get ahead of the narrative.”

Israel has carried out relentless air strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip since October 7, killing at least 11,078 Palestinian people, including 4,500 children, displacing 1.5 million people, and wrecking much of the territory’s infrastructure, Gaza officials say.

Hamas’s surprise attack on Israeli territory on October 7 killed some 1,200 Israelis, according to Israeli officials.

Sternlicht’s media drive aims to brand Hamas as a “terrorist organisation” that is “not just the enemy of Israel, but of the United States”, he wrote. The goal is to draw $50m in private donations, paired with a matching contribution from a Jewish charity. Hamas is already designated as a “terrorist” organisation by the US and the European Union for its armed resistance against Israeli occupation.

It is unclear which figures have donated, but the campaign has raised at least a few million dollars already, Semafor reported, citing “people familiar with the matter”.

It is being advised by Josh Vlasto, a communications strategist who previously worked for US Senator Chuck Schumer and former Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, Semafor reported.

The US is Israel’s strongest global ally, providing it with billions of dollars of aid annually and staunch diplomatic backing. Despite the mounting humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the US government has continuously rebuffed global calls for a ceasefire and reiterated that Washington will not give Israel “red lines” in the war. On November 2, the US Congress passed a $14.3bn emergency military aid package for Israel.

However, public support for the US’s position appears to be ebbing, with nearly half of US Democrats disapproving of how Joe Biden has handled the conflict, according to a recent poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Social media giants such as Instagram, X, YouTube and TikTok have been accused of censoring pro-Palestine voices by reducing their reach, a practice known as shadowbanning.

Axios reported last month that pro-Palestine posts on TikTok were being viewed four times more than pro-Israel posts. This came as people around the world have reacted with horror to the mounting death toll in Gaza where most of the killed are civilians.

Facts For Peace, the media campaign launched by Sternlicht, aims to win back public favour for Israel, posting videos on its social media pages blaming Hamas for the plight of Palestinians and denying claims of Israeli rights violations.

The most recent video posted on its Facebook page argues that “Israel is not an apartheid state”.

This contradicts findings from Palestinian, Israeli and international rights experts, including from the United Nations, that Israel is practising apartheid through its “deeply discriminatory dual legal and political system” in the occupied territories.

Israel occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 war and later annexed East Jerusalem. It withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005 but continues to maintain a siege on the territory of 2.3 million people. Israel has continued to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem – a step considered illegal under international law.

Settlements pose the biggest hurdles in the realisation of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel, experts say. The US has condemned the settlements’ expansions but done little to stop its closest ally.