التصنيف: estaql

Former United States secretary of state Henry Kissinger has died aged 100.

He passed away at his home in Connecticut on Wednesday, according to a statement from Kissinger Associates Inc.

The veteran politician had major influence on American foreign policy under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

Born in Germany in 1923, Mr Kissinger fled the Nazi regime with his family as a teenager and settled in the US in 1938.

During eight years as a national security adviser and secretary of state, Dr Kissinger was involved in major foreign policy events including the first example of “shuttle diplomacy” seeking peace in the Middle East, secret negotiations with China to defrost relations between the burgeoning superpowers and the instigation of the Paris peace talks seeking an end to the Vietnam conflict.

In 1973 he was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to negotiate an end to the Vietnam War.

However, Dr Kissinger, along with President Nixon, also bore the brunt of criticism from the US’s allies following the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces in 1975 as the remaining US personnel fled what is now known as Ho Chi Minh City.

His influence over US diplomacy – which continued long after he left office – has not been without controversy, and some activists called for him to be prosecuted for war crimes.

He remained active in politics, even after his 100th birthday in May, attending meetings in the White House, publishing a book on leadership styles, and testifying before a Senate committee about the nuclear threat posed by North Korea.

In July 2023 he made a surprise visit to Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.

During his early life, after becoming a naturalised US citizen in 1943, Dr Kissinger joined the US Army the same year and was awarded a Bronze Star.

He would go on to serve with US counter intelligence in occupied Germany.

Dr Kissinger earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD degrees at Harvard University, where he taught international relations for almost 20 years before President Nixon appointed him national security advisor in 1969.

He is survived by his wife of nearly 50 years, Nancy Maginnes Kissinger, two children by his first marriage, David and Elizabeth, and five grandchildren.

According to the statement from Kissinger Associates: “He will be interred at a private family service. At a later date, there will be a memorial service in New York City.”

Senator and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney paid tribute to Dr Kissinger on X describing him as a “great one” and saying: “Fortunate indeed is America for his lifetime of diplomacy, wisdom, and love of freedom.”

Winston Lord, former US ambassador to China and Dr Kissinger’s one time special assistant said: “The world has lost a tireless advocate for peace.

“America has lost a towering champion for the national interest. I have lost a cherished friend and mentor.

“Henry blended the European sense of tragedy and the American immigrant’s sense of hope.”

Cindy McCain, the wife of late Senator John McCain said: “Henry Kissinger was ever present in my late husband’s life.

“While John was a POW and in the later years as a Senator & statesman.

“The McCain family will miss his wit, charm, and intelligence terribly.”

Hwang is being probed for filming his former partner on his phone without consent and sharing the video on social media.

Striker Hwang Ui-jo has been suspended by South Korea seven weeks before the Asian Cup because of a police investigation into allegations he illegally filmed an ex-girlfriend.

The Norwich City forward is accused of filming a sexual encounter with the former partner on his phone without consent and sharing the video on social media. He denies the allegation.

Hwang played for South Korea in two World Cup qualifiers this month, scoring a penalty against Singapore, but the Korea Football Association (KFA) on Tuesday suspended him pending the outcome of police investigations.

The 31-year-old remains able to play for English second-tier club Norwich and scored in a 3-2 defeat at Watford on Tuesday.

“Until a definitive conclusion is drawn, we have decided to exclude Hwang from the national team,” a KFA statement.

Lee Youn-nam, who heads the KFA’s ethics committee, told reporters that national players must conduct themselves “with a high degree of morality and responsibility”.

“Considering the fact that the player is being investigated as a suspect, it is difficult for him to carry out normal national team activities,” Lee said.

“Football fans have high expectations for the national team, [so] we have deemed it inappropriate to select Hwang Ui-jo for the national team.”

Hwang, who is on loan at Norwich from Nottingham Forest, has scored 19 goals in 62 appearances for South Korea.

Coach Jurgen Klinsmann said in a statement issued by the KFA: “I fully understand the current situation and will respect the decision of the Korea Football Association.”

Klinsmann picked Hwang for recent World Cup qualifying wins over Singapore and China, after the police had begun their probe, and defended his decision at the time.

“There is always speculation,” said the German World Cup winner after returning from the 3-0 win over China in Shenzhen last week.

“Until there’s nothing proven… I don’t believe it.”

The Asian Cup kicks off in Qatar on January 12, with South Korea opening their campaign against Bahrain three days later.

Israeli women and children on their return from captivity in Gaza have spoken of being beaten and threatened, moved from place to place and forced to whisper during weeks spent with little to do, their families say.

Most captives released during a six-day-old truce have been rushed to hospitals in a country still reeling from the shock of their abduction during a Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7 in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed.

Since the latest round of releases began on Friday, with Israel releasing some jailed Palestinians in exchange, the freed captives have been kept away from the media.

Their stories have come out through the filter of family members, without independent verification, offering a hint of their ordeal. Most of the 240 captives that Israel says were seized on October 7 are still in captivity.

Deborah Cohen told France’s BFM TV she had been told her 12-year-old nephew Eitan Yahalomi and others were beaten by Palestinian residents on arrival in Gaza during the Hamas attack. She said his captors made him watch footage of the Hamas violence.

“Every time a child cried there, they threatened them with a weapon to make them be quiet. Once they got to Gaza, all the civilians, everyone was hitting them … We’re talking about a child, 12 years old,” she said.

Hamas, the Palestinian armed group which governs Gaza, says it has treated the captives in accordance with Islamic teachings to preserve their lives and wellbeing.

It says some captives were killed by Israeli air raids during a military offensive that was launched in response to the October 7 attacks. More than 15,000 people have been killed in the Israeli air and ground assault, including more than 6,000 children, according to Palestinian officials in Gaza.

Speaking in whispers

Some details are slowly surfacing from medical professionals treating them and relatives of the freed captives.

Ronit Zaidenstein, head of the medical team at Shamir Medical Center where 17 released Thai nationals were treated, said they had been fed “very unnutritious food” in captivity.

“The people who came to us lost a significant amount of their body weight in such a short time – 10 percent or more.”

In an interview that has since been taken offline, Margarita Mashavi, a doctor at Wolfson Medical Centre – one of the main facilities caring for freed captives – said those she spoke to described being kept several stories underground.

“They didn’t give them light. They gave it to them for only two hours,” she was quoted as saying by the Ynet news site on Monday.

The families of two girls who were held together found it hard to hear their children on their return home because they spoke only in whispers.

“I had to put my ear close to her mouth to hear. In captivity, she was told not to make any noise. You can see the terror in her eyes,” Thomas Hand, the father of nine-year-old Emily Hand, told CNN.

Yair Rotem said his niece Hila Rotem Shoshani, 13, was held with Emily Hand, and was also now speaking in whispers. She spoke of hugging her mother Raaya, still in Gaza, who cried when the girls were taken from her before their return to Israel.

Merav Mor Raviv said captors of her cousin Keren Munder, Keren’s nine-year-old son Ohad and mother Ruth, spoke Hebrew and at times, would motion with a finger across their throats as if to warn of death if they did not do as told.

She told Israel’s Channel 12 they were moved from place to place, both underground and above ground. They lost weight as food was scarce at times, and ate mostly rice and bread.

Thoughts of reuniting

Adva Adar said her grandmother Yaffa Adar, 85, had shown toughness by constantly contemplating reuniting with family.

“She said that she was thinking about the family a lot and that it helped her survive and that she could hear the voices of the great-grandchildren calling her and that it gave her a lot of power,” the granddaughter told Reuters.

One Israeli mother, Daniel Aloni, wrote to thank Hamas’s armed Qassam Brigades before her release with daughter Emilia. Their story went viral in Arabic media.

Daniel wrote to thank them for giving Emilia sweets and fruit and treating her daughter like a queen.

“I will forever be thankful that she doesn’t leave here with trauma,” she wrote. “If only in this world we could truly be good friends.”

US federal prosecutors charge 52-year-old Indian man for alleged involvement in murder-for-hire conspiracy.

Authorities in the United States have said that an Indian government official directed a failed plot to assassinate a Sikh separatist on US soil, as they announced charges against a man accused of orchestrating the attempted murder.

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors said that Nikhil Gupta, a 52-year-old Indian man, had worked with an Indian government intelligence and security worker in a clandestine effort to kill a Sikh activist in New York.

Prosecutors did not name the Indian official or the target, but described the target as a critic of the Indian government and an advocate for an independent Sikh state in the Punjab region, home to a large number of Sikhs and once the site of a movement to create Khalistan – a Sikh homeland independent from India.

Gupta was arrested by Czech authorities in June and is awaiting extradition.

“The defendant conspired from India to assassinate, right here in New York City, a US citizen of Indian origin who has publicly advocated for the establishment of a sovereign state for Sikhs,” said Damian Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan.

Prosecutors said that Gupta allegedly planned to pay an assassin $100,000 to carry out the killing.

The charges have come a week after a senior member of the administration of President Joe Biden said that the US had thwarted a plot to kill a Sikh separatist in the US, and two months after Canadian authorities accused the Indian government of involvement in the assassination of a Sikh activist in Canada.

That official said Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who says he is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada, was the target of the foiled plot.

Justice Department Announces Charges in Connection with Foiled Plot to Assassinate U.S. Citizen in New York City

Indian Government Employee Directed a Plot from India to Murder U.S.-Based Leader of Sikh Separatist Movementhttps://t.co/v1IDJXy46P pic.twitter.com/dxDmarrjH4

— National Security Division, U.S. Dept of Justice (@DOJNatSec) November 29, 2023

India’s embassy in Washington was yet to comment on the charges.

New Delhi has rejected allegations that it was behind the June murder of Canadian Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, but Canadian authorities have stood firmly behind the claim and pulled dozens of diplomats from India in response.

“The news coming out of the United States further underscores what we’ve been talking about from the very beginning, which is that India needs to take this seriously,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday.

According to US prosecutors, the official recruited Gupta in May 2023 to orchestrate the assassination. Gupta had previously told the official he had been involved with trafficking drugs and weapons.

Gupta next reached out to someone he believed was a criminal associate for help hiring a hitman, but that associate was actually a US Drug Enforcement Administration undercover agent, prosecutors said.

The day after Nijjar was killed, Gupta wrote to the undercover DEA agent saying Nijjar “was also the target” and “we have so many targets,” according to prosecutors.

Gupta faces two counts of murder-for-hire and murder-for-hire conspiracy. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years if convicted.

India has described Sikh separatism as a national security threat, and fought a brutal campaign against armed separatists seeking the establishment of a Sikh state in Punjab, commonly referred to as Khalistan, in the 1980s.

While India has continued to crack down on activists who support Khalistani separatism, analysts have said that the movement has long ceased to be a serious force in India.

​​”The Modi government has consistently hyped up the Khalistani threat to India,” Hartosh Bal, executive editor of The Caravan magazine in India, previously told Al Jazeera.

“I think, again, because it suits them domestically to talk about security threats to the Indian nation, rather than the actual measure of threat on the ground from the movement.”

An investigation finds the Emirati president of the talks, who is also an oil executive, is using his role to push fossil fuel deals.

The Emirati president of the United Nations climate conference in Dubai has denied reports that he has used his role at the negotiations to pursue fossil fuel deals.

A day before the talks are due to begin on Thursday, Sultan al-Jaber, who also is the CEO of the state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (Adnoc), rejected allegations made in a joint investigation by the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR) and the BBC.

“These allegations are false, not true, incorrect and not accurate,” Jaber told reporters on Wednesday ahead of the talks, which will draw world leaders and tens of thousands of delegates to Dubai over the next two weeks.

“It’s an attempt to undermine the work of the COP28 presidency. Let me ask you a question: Do you think the UAE or myself will need the COP or the COP presidency to go and establish business deals or commercial relationships?”

Leaked documents show that al-Jaber planned to discuss fossil fuel deals in bilateral meetings at the climate summit, the CCR said.

According to the non-profit investigative journalism group, the documents include more than 150 pages of briefings prepared by COP28 staff from July to October and obtained by the CCR and the BBC from an anonymous whistle-blower.

The documents indicate Jaber planned to discuss commercial interests with almost 30 countries, according to CCR.

The briefing notes, detailed in reports published on Monday, signalled Adnoc’s willingness to work with countries including China, Germany and Egypt to develop oil and gas projects.

The CCR said that alongside the briefings, it has also seen emails and meeting records “which raise serious questions about the COP28 team’s independence from Adnoc”.

“Please, for once, respect who we are, respect what we have achieved over the years and respect the fact that we have been clear, open and clean and honest and transparent on how we want to conduct this COP process,” al-Jaber said.

Contested presidency

Former United States Vice President Al Gore, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for campaigning for climate action, said the allegations “have confirmed some of the worst fears” around al-Jaber while former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said the COP28 host had been caught “red-handed”.

“The global community’s gaze is fixed upon these leaders, expecting them to embody the very essence of integrity, untainted by bias and national or personal gain,” said Tasneem Essop, executive director of Climate Action Network International.

“Any deviation from this path represents a betrayal of the trust placed in them by the world and a failure in their duty to future generations,” she wrote on X.

Al-Jaber, a 50-year-old longtime climate envoy, is a trusted confidant of the leader of the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. He’s been behind tens of billions of dollars spent or pledged towards renewable energy in the UAE.

He has weathered other controversies over alleged conflict of interest since being appointed COP28 president this year, including calls from US and European lawmakers for his replacement.

Supporters, including US climate envoy John Kerry, said al-Jaber is uniquely positioned to broker compromise at the COP28 talks, where world leaders will be confronted by their lack of progress in curbing global warming in a record-breaking hot year.

Reining in the use of fossil fuels and carbon emissions are expected to top the agenda of the 13-day summit, which runs from Thursday until December 12. International funding to help countries adapt to climate change will also be hotly debated as developing countries have been demanding more contributions from industrialised nations.

An ambitious loss and damages fund agreed last year to support poorer nations to help manage the negative effects of climate change is also going to be one of the main issues covered in the negotiations. World leaders agreed to the fund at COP27 last year, but they have failed to reach consensus on the most important questions of all – which states will pay into it and how much.